Last Thursday, three friends and I explored a decommissioned missile silo bunker near the town of Deer Trail, Colorado. The site is underground, and the only things visible on the surface are a couple vent shafts and the concrete roof of the access elevator, which is only about three feet high. We were able to get in through a hole that was cut into some grating that is located at the base of a depression in the landscape. The place has been abandoned for decades and is very decrepit. I had brought along a digital camera, but had completely forgot about it until we had been in the place for roughly fourty minutes.
Here we are going down a tunnel that ran off from the entrance hall. My friend Dave's arm can be seen on the right. The springs on the ceiling were used for light fixtures, so that in case of bombardment, the bulbs wouldn't burst due to shaking.
Daniel Jr. is on the left and Chris to the right. The tunnel runs for straight for about 300 meters.
From left to right: Dave, Chris, and Daniel Jr., who was collecting things like batteries and candles in that bucket he found.
If you believe "orbs" are spirit energy or ghosts, then there you go. I think it's simply a dust particle illuminated by the flash.
Signs that the silo has been used since it was deactivated. Not quite sure if it was squatters or partying teenagers. There is a Mexican phone card near the cushion on the left, which lends to the idea that illegal immigrants were living there.
The tunnel veers off to the right...
ending in this room...
which is filled with funky water...
and an even funkier mattress. I'd hate to be the poor soul who slept on that thing.
A veritable ghost party.
Dave leads the way through the doorway on the right.
The demon "Creo" greets us.
The domed ceiling and what looks to be the remains of a catwalk. Also a lot of dust, I mean "orbs".
A ladder leading into nowhere. I'm actually under the impression that this room and it's adjacant sister housed smaller missiles than the big daddies located elsewhere in the base. When the place was abandoned, these silos were filled in with dirt.
Our intrepid explorers (left to right: Daniel Jr., Dave, myself, and Chris) pose with "Creo". A helpful ghost, or "haint" as I like to call them, took the picture for us. My hand is resting on our biggest source of light. It didn't illuminate as far as the other flashlights, but it could light up an entire room. It was also unwieldly when climbing up rusty ladders or balancing along a railing over brakish water and chasms filled with rusty sharp things.
Creepy grafitti made with childrens hands. Atleast it's just white paint and not blood, eh?
An old ventilation fan.
My ugly mug. I like to think that I was the scariest (atleast looking) thing in the place. At this point I was walking over that nasty mattress.
Going back down the tunnel towards the entrance hall. We were expecting a mutated beast to come shambling out of the darkness at us at any moment.
Halfway down the tunnel, signs of violence. 30-30 and .45 shell casings lie scattered in the dirt.
A barrel riddled with bullet holes. In another section of the complex, there were a lot of bullet holes in the walls, and I do mean a lot. If I had to guess, I would estimate a few hundred rounds were fired in the place. I like to pretend that a large and bloody gun battle was waged down there, but in reality it was probably a bunch of rednecks having fun.
Here we are coming back into the entrace hallway. We had come from the right. The left led to the barracks, which was where the walls were filled with bullet holes. It was also noticably lived in as recently as a couple years ago. Ahead lay the tunnel towards the actual silos, which stretched on for atleast half a mile. In front of Dave is a rotting couch.
A cable spool used for a table rests in the middle of the intersection. A cooking pot, potatoes, candles, and other junk lay on top.
The blast doors for the entrance to the complex. On the far side is the cargo elevator that leads to the surface, some 80-100 feet above. We did not come in through this way.
What I can only assume to be a fuel container graffited to let us know that Theresa rules.
The other container, informing that Troy was killed by Dave and his body is in the blast, probably after Troy wrote that Dave sucked him first.
And that was the last picture I took. I wanted to take one of the door we had come through to this part of the complex, but my camera mysteriously shut off as I was about to snap it, and it didn't come back on. The batteries were fresh, and I got no low power warning. It was like something sucked all the juice out of it. Perhaps it didn't want me to take a picture of that door?
I was quite annoyed, as I only managed to capture about 10% of the place. Still ahead was the barracks, the missile silos themselves, the tunnels, all the side rooms, the bizarre things like a deflated raft filled with red fluid (maybe blood?) in one of the intersections, the large bird like nest with broken flashlights piled in it, the graffiti on the opposite side of the silo walls which could only be accessed by hanging from the pipes along the wall.
We saw two of the three silos. The first was filled with water until about twenty feet below where the access point was. The water in the second began about sixty feet down. In both, the ceiling was roughly fifty or sixty feet above us, and the far wall was a good sixty feet away as well. Daniel Jr. had brought a spool of twine inside, and tied it to a heavy bolt. He then threw it over the side into the water and we watched as the line ran. When it finally stopped, it had gone down atleast 100 feet. In all, the silos were somewhere around 150-180 feet tall. It was at this time when we heard the only inexplicable sound during the entire adventure. Something hit the wall on the opposite side, and could not be contributed to anything we had done.
After three hours in the place, our lights began to get dim. We still hadn't explored the tunnels that lead to Missile Control 3, but we felt it best to leave before our flashlights died. It would be no fun trying to feel our way out in the dark (infact, it would most definately result in injury or death), and cell phones were useless that far below ground, especially in a place designed to withstand a nuclear blast.
I definately want to go back, this time taking pictures from the start, and hopefully have the camera survive the entire trip. That third silo beckons to me, and I'm left wondering what secrets it holds. Perhaps a dead body or Nazi gold. Who can say?