Adair Air Force Station

The "Blockhouse" (Image tuned to bring out blocks)

Click here to View the Battle Staff Support Center

Click here for a tour of the powerhouse building (Under construction)

Click here for the October 2002 update!

Adair first became aquainted with the military in 1941. Cow pastures, farmland, towns, and cemeteries were uprooted, moved, or destroyed to build Camp Adair for a training base for World War II. Camp Adair was named for Henry Rodney Adair, a West Point graduate and Oregon pioneer who was the first Oregonian killed in the 1916 Mexican border clashes.

Four divisions trained at Camp Adair between 1942 and 1944 seeing action in the Pacific and Europe. In 1944, after the last divisions cleared out for WW2, the US Navy took over the camp hospital and used it for treatment of casualties from the Pacific. Rumors also circulated of German prisoners of war being held at the old cantonment area.

In 1946, the Oregon State College was short on housing and converted the former hospital into 370 apartment units for students and 30 faculty apartments. Camp Adair first became known as "Adair Village" at this time, as well as being noted for having the highest birth rate in the state of Oregon.

In November of 1955 Adair was once again called to serve the country's defense needs. The US Air Force announced plans to build a SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) direction center there. SAGE was the beginnings of the United States' radar air defense network, providing early detection of an attack by Soviet bomber aircraft. Preliminary surveys found the old cantonment area too wet and muddy for building. The Corvallis Chamber of Commerce helped pursue the matter and the old hospital site was found to be suitable for building.

Ground was broken on June 12, 1957 by the Ross B. Hammond Company of Portland, Oregon. The main operations area was to cost $7,000,000 and take two years to complete.
As construction continued on the main operations building, soon to be known as "the blockhouse" (this for the large squares of concrete as looking at the outside of the building and lack of any windows), 18,834 cubic yards of concrete were poured. At one six hour period over 400 cubic yards of concrete were poured. One newspaper account compared the mass of Gill Coliseum at Oregon State University as being about half that amount of concrete.

Part of the huge mass of the building included a 3 1/2 foot thick slab of concrete that the building sat on. Even though the site was favorable for building it contained no "hard pan" for foundation support.

A popular rumor among local residents was that the walls of the building were as thick as the outside block appearance, roughly 8 foot squares. In reality the walls were only 24 inches thick at the bottom and 8 inches of reinforced concrete at the top floor of the structure.

In addition to the SAGE site the Air Force proposed building a BOMARC missile base. The BOMARC missile was a surface to air interceptor missile with a range of several hundred miles and was later made capable of carrying small nuclear warheads.

$10,000,000 was released in May of 1 958 for construction of the BOMARC site. 56 former Camp Adair buildings were removed to make way for the missiles. The base was built and completed but by that time the BOMARC had, for all, purposes become obsolete. The same contractor was hired to remove the site and "restore it to it's original condition". The electrical wiring was pulled out of the conduits with a bulldozer and the launch pads filled in with gravel. All concrete foundations were left and can still be seen there today.

As work progressed on the operations building more money was allocated in January of 1958 for support buildings including a base headquarters, barracks, and mess hall. At this same time plans were being made for a base housing area to be located just to the north of the main base area.

Map of Main Base area: click on image for lager picture.

Each number corresponds to a building above.

200 Service Club
210 Filling Station
215 Baseball Diamond
220 Civil Engineers Shop
222 Motor Pool
225 Operations Building
226 Commercial Transportation and Supply
227 Powerhouse
228 Cold Storage
229 Gate Guard House
230 Barracks #1
231 Fire Station
232 Air Police Building
233 Dining Hall
234 Barracks #2
235 Base Exchange
236 NCO Barracks
237 Base Headquarters
242 Gymnasium
244 Commissary Store
245 Base Chapel
246 Bowling Alley
248 Special Activities Building
249 Base Hospital
251 NCO Club
255 Bachelors Officers Quarters
257 Officers Open Mess
260 Water Pump Station

The operations building was completed in late 1958, making room for two giant IBM computers that were to occupy most of the first floor of the building. Each computer weighed 272 tons. The system contained over 50,000 vacuum tubes, 7,300 pluggable units, and over 919 miles of external and signal cables.

Special precautions were taken to ensure that the computer functioned in all conditions. The entire computer was mounted on large springs to absorb any shock. Humidity and temperature levels were critical to the computer operations. Power, heat, humidity, and air conditioning were all strictly controlled.

Power generators and climate control operations were located in a smaller concrete building located directly behind the operations building. Six White Motor Company 8 cylinder diesel engines provided continuous electrical power, up to 3,900 kilowatts of electricity or enough power for a small city. Under normal operation four generators were operating at any one time with two down for maintenance. Two could provide minimal electrical power. Also contained in the power house were steam boilers that provided heat for the support buildings adjacent to the operations building.

By January of 1960, Adair Air Force Station was fully operational and became headquarters for the 25th Air Division and the Portland Air Defense Sector (PADS). The PADS stretched from the Oregon-Washington border on the north to Red Bluff, California on the south. All aircraft coming into US airspace in this sector were targeted and identified. If identification was not made then fighter-interceptor aircraft were dispatched to investigate.

Adair Air Force Station and the Portland Air Defense Sector were only a small part of a larger air defense warning system. 28 direction centers were planned for the country with headquarters located at CONAD, Continental Air Defense Command, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Three lines of radar extended across the north of Canada. The first was the DEW line, Distant Early Warning, located near the Arctic Circle. The second was the Mid-Canada line, running east-west through central Canada. The third and final line was the Pine tree line running along the Canada-United States Border.

The country was broken up into three Air Defense Areas, Western, Central, and Eastern along with Pacific and Atlantic Air Defense Identification Zones extending out to sea. These zones were the layout for the SAGE system. Each Air Defense Identification Zone, ADIZ, had remote radar stations, gap filler radar sites, (small unmanned radar stations) and sea based radar feeding a mosaic of radar data into the SAGE computer where information was processed and analyzed.

Adair was assigned radar units located at: Kingsley Field, Klamath Falls, Oregon (the 827th AC+W Squadron), Mt. Hebo, Oregon (the 689th Radar Squadron), North Bend Oregon (the 761st Radar Squadron), Red Bluff, California (the 859th Radar Squadron), and at Klamath, California (the 777th AC+W Squadron) and a gap-filler radar located on top of Mary's Peak, about 30 miles southwest of Adair. Other radar stations in Oregon were located near Burns, Condon, and Baker but did not report to Adair and other west coast direction centers were located at McChord Air Force Base, Tacoma, Washington and Reno, Nevada.

Fighter-interceptor units available to Adair were located at Hamilton Air Force Base, California, Homestead Air Force Base, Idaho, and McChord Air Force Base, Washington. Since Adair was located away from any major airports and did not have any aircraft assigned to it, fighter patrols would fly over occasionally to remind Adair that they were an Air Force Base.

Sixty duplex units and thirty single housing units were built to the north of the main base area for married personnel. The project became known as the Capehart housing development. Each unit had a fireplace that apparently, after being built, the Air Force disapproved of. Strict expectations were expected of residents living in base housing, lawns were to be neatly trimmed at all times and nothing could be allowed to accumulate outside. The units were fairly roomy and comfortable with plenty of storage closets and space for keeping belongings out of site.

Adair served for nearly ten years but finally went the way of the BOMARC into obsolescence. Adair was officially deactivated on September 15, 1969. Responsibilities were transferred to McChord Air Force Base, Tacoma, Washington and Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. A caretaker staff was left at the base, the computer equipment disassembled and sent to other locations still using the technology. A large question remained as to what to do with the site. Most of the buildings were only ten years old and there were still 90 housing units left unoccupied.

Proposals ranged from a US Navy weather station to a liberal arts university. One proposal was from a group called the "Oregon Poor People Conference". Their idea was to utilize the base for poor peoples programs. Picketing and demonstrations were held at the base but the group was without strong leadership and eventually fell apart.

In November of 1972 the base housing area was released for sale and sold as one lot to a Colorado developer. The main base area was granted to the Chicano Indians and a collection of labor unions on a 30 year lease. The Chicanos used their share for an academic and vocational training, cultural studies, and a day care center. The unions gained control of 17 buildings including the operations building and developed a labor training center to train construction workers and carpenters.

In 1976 the remains of Camp Adair and Adair Air Force Station officially became the city of Adair Village. The Chicano Indians moved on in 1977 and in 1979 Santiam Christian School moved into the headquarters building and the old base exchange. The old bowling alley was turned into a furniture and the Prince of Peace Mennonite Church took over the base chapel.

The military has left hundreds of these small bases all over the country, coming in, building, occupying, and moving on. All is not wasted in the end result. Civilians seem to be fairly resourceful in putting the sites back to good use.

Walking through the abandoned halls of the blockhouse today, still seeing the defcon (defense condition) boards on the walls, one might wonder what it might have been like with all the radar screens scanning, lights buzzing and the thought of war on the back of your mind

Pictures and Notes:

The photo above is of the interior of the power house. This is a photocopy out of a maintenance manual so the quality is not the best. The diesel generator units were White Motor Company 60-SX-8 units, rated at 925.3 bhp when operating at 450 RPM, each driving an Electric Products a-c generator rated at 650 kw, 813 kva. -From Air Force Technical manual.

The picture above shows the base headquarters building. This building is only one of a few that has not been altered over the last twenty years.

The map above was from the same technical manual and shows the layout of the operations building area.

Powerhouse September 2002

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