On Apr 29, 2019, at 2:06 AM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
You've touched on an interesting subject which I encourage you to Google further. Les Earnest claims the station up there was part of the SAGE air defense system, which was the biggest taxpayer fraud in history. But he also mentions that, 20 miles away, it was blitzing the Stanford AILab computer at 13 second intervals. I.e., whatever they were doing, the people up there were serious. The actual radar building is improbably large: http://www.redwoodhikes.com/Skyline/MtUmunhum1.jpg There were people actually living there year-round. They even had a bowling alley. (I bet that, summer afternoons, it's *way* too windy for volleyball!) And for years after it closed, the area was very off-limits to hikers and motorists. —rwg
Interesting indeed. As a teenager growing up in San Jose I decided one morning to hike to the top. There was no trail at the point I departed suburbia but I was in no danger of getting lost on the densely wooded slope because the sound of the rotating dish made a perfect homing signal. At the top, the cyclone fence forced me to follow the perimeter of the facility, which I did until I arrived at a guarded dirt road entrance. At that point a pair of uniformed men politely escorted me back to the base of Umunhum in their jeep. No tour, no bowling. -Veit