Raise your hands. How many of you knew there was a Nike Missile Launch Station here in the Everglades? Well, if you raised your hands, you’re a lot more aware than I am. I didn’t know this until I looked at the Ranger talks and read: ‘Nike Missile Site Tour.’ Shows how smart I am. But the plan for today was to head up 38 miles to the east entry point to the Everglades, tour that and then wend our way down the road back to our campground taking whatever trails or nature walks there were. An all day trip we figured.
I had my Misfit on, my goal set and I was ready to tackle it. When we got to the VC, we read the ranger talks and signed up for the Slough Slog (that’s just exactly what they called it - we’re going to put on our oldest lace-up shoes, our oldest socks, long pants and slog through the Everglades slough. More about that tomorrow. Then we signed up for the 2:00 Nike Missile Site Tour, toured the VC and headed out to start our journey back. We figured we’d get so sites in before the tour.
Our first stop was - the bathrooms. OK, our real first stop was the Anhinga Trail, named after a bird that is really prevalent here. We saw a lot of them. Some were diving, some were sunning, some were preening on top of the shelter and one lifted his feathered rear end, pointed and shot - right at the young man sitting on the bench behind him. Wow, could that bird aim. That young man gave a yelp and scooted down the bench, out of the range of fire and began wiping his shoes. Whoo-eee.
But, if the goal was to see alligators sunning, great blue herons fishing, egrets poised to strike, snakes slithering through the clear water and tourists of all sizes and ages, then this was the place to be. Usually Gary and I tour alone since we’re touring on weekdays but this was Saturday and everyone had funneled down here.
Hey. look, it’s an alligator jam - just like the bison jams in Yellowstone.
On our way out, we saw this anhinga trying to swallow a fish larger than his throat. But, if we thought the anhinga would fail, we were proven wrong, He twisted and turned and swallowed. Finally he got it down and everyone who had stopped for the show, clapped. It was funny but deadly serious to the anhinga.
Look at that bulge in his neck.
We finished the walk around the Anhinga Trail and headed down the road to the Nike site. Now, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, mostly because I taught about it in my American History classes a long time ago in a previous life. However, I don’t remember much about it from the actual events from my own life. That was back in 1962 and, as a high school junior, I was more interested in that cute boy in my English class, getting my term paper in and trying to remember my locker combination (16-2-32 - easy to remember and I still know it) than in any actual history. That was during the Cold War, after the Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs debacle when we wanted nothing to do with Cuba and Russia saw its opening - what an opportunity to put our missiles close to the US just as the US was putting missiles close to the USSR in Turkey.
For the month of October 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev looked eye to eye, waiting for the other to blink. Russia had ships heading to Cuba and we ‘knew’ they were missiles with nuclear war heads that were going to be arrayed in Cuba against us. Kennedy said no, Khrushchev said yes and the world waited. Finally, Russia agreed not to put missiles in Cuba, America agreed to remove the missiles from Turkey (which we were going to do in 10 days anyway) and it all ended with out a war. Close call and many thought that a war was very nearly averted.
Did we know that there were already nuclear warheads there, that missiles had already been landed? Did we know there were 80,000 Russians in Cuba already? No to all these questions. But both Kennedy and Khrushchev realized that a war would be too destructive and both went the negotiating route. But the threat of Cuba still remained and in 1969 we built a Nike missile base here in the Everglades, built 3 missile ‘barns’, and stationed trained soldiers here.
Here is the main administrative building here. Note the pretty pink color - actually this color is called coral and is quite popular down here. Our guide told us that it was probably very cheap since it was so popular and that is why all the buildings were painted this color.
The army built the base and erected lots of tents for the men to live in: when the Florida natives told them not to put the tents on the ground, the army ignored this advice and, when the rainy season arrived in the spring and summer as it always does, the tents flooded. After this little problem had been solved, the men who lived here named mosquitoes as their worst annoyance, snakes second and the heat third. Once a week they got to go into Homestead, the nearest town, and take a shower at the base there. One time two soldiers came back form time off in an ‘impaired’ condition, hit a bobcat, thought him dead, carried him back to the base, put him in the PX and brought their friends to see it before they called the police. Oops, the bobcat was not dead and was very unhappy.
After we had listened to our tour guide with this introduction, we all got into our cars, followed him to where the actual missiles were kept in 3 large ‘barns’ about a mile away from the base, where the radar was. The missile launch teams called the radar guys ‘Scope Dopes’ while the radar men called the missile launch teams ‘Launch Rats.’ Friendly rivalry.
Here’s one of the actual missiles that has been spiffed up by a local aviation school.
By the way here’s a picture of the actual computer that controlled these missiles - with vacuum tubes in it. Pretty rudimentary compared to the power of today’s smart phones but it was the state of the art in 1969.
We also saw the bomb shelter that the men had next to the missile barn. Pretty grim and it was supposed to hold 10 men if needed. Supplies and bathroom facilities? Hmmm.
Afterwards we wandered through some of the other trails in the park. We saw some pretty neat things that we don’t normally see like this Gumbo Limbo tree, called the ‘tourist tree’ because of its red bark.
We took another trail to see the ‘Sea of Grass’ which is what most of the Everglades is composed. By the way, this is not a swamp which is stagnant water but a slough which is running clean water. The water begins up near Orlando in the Kissimmee basin, and runs all the way through Lake Okeechobee and through the Everglades. It is pretty dry now but almost knee-deep in the rainy season.
Half way around the boardwalk trail, we heard some hooting. We followed it and heard two owls talking - probably about the people below them. Then I saw one up in the tree - looking directly at me. How neat.
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