Montauk Project / Camp Hero
A Cold War radar station on the eastern tip of Long Island, decommissioned and handed to the state as a park. A 1992 book turned its sealed concrete into claims of mind control and time travel, and a Netflix series was pitched under its name.
Field Guide Entry
What the tower was for
The AN/FPS-35 radar at Camp Hero was built in 1958 as part of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment network, the system meant to detect Soviet bombers coming over the pole. The tower is a steel lattice carrying a curved antenna the size of a building, standing on a bluff above the Atlantic.
The Air Force ran the site through the Cold War. The property went to New York State Parks in 1984 and opened to the public, with the tower left standing. The bunkers, gun emplacements, and sealed entrances are still there, and the surface buildings were built to look like a fishing village from the sea.
The 1992 book
The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon, assembled the claims into a single narrative: mind control and time-travel work carried out at the base, a laboratory complex running as many as 12 levels beneath the tower, and the program continuing long after the Air Force left.
The evidence offered is recovered memory, Nichols's own testimony, and the interpretation of obvious secrecy. No document, no photograph of an underground complex, and no corroborating witness from outside the circle around the books has been produced. What the site does have is a classified history, a lot of sealed concrete, and a decommissioning that left much of it shut, which is room enough for the rest to grow.
Stranger Things
The Duffer brothers pitched the series that became Stranger Things under the working title Montauk, and the small town, the secret government laboratory, and the children used as subjects come straight out of this material. The show moved to Indiana. The visitors kept coming here.
Camp Hero is a state park with trails, parking, and fishing access. The underground entrances are sealed.
Visiting Information
Camp Hero State Park is open to the public with a vehicle fee in season, and the radar tower is visible from most of the site. The bluff trails and the surf-fishing access at the point are the main draw for people who are not here for the story.
The military structures are not open. Bunker entrances are sealed, some buildings are fenced, and the park is explicit that going past those barriers is trespass rather than exploration. People do try it, and that is what the fencing is responding to.
Montauk Point State Park and the lighthouse sit next door and are usually combined with a visit. The eastern end of Long Island is seasonal, so late spring through fall is when everything is open.
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Nearby Strange Places
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Gillette Castle
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Lizzie Borden House
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Voynich Manuscript
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