Old missile sites are silent reminders of a tense time
Confession: I've never loved history. To me, the stuff we were forced to learn in school always seemed like far-off tales from an obsolete world.
But this week, a few longtime area residents gave me a much-needed reminder that even local sites like Nike Park in Naperville -- and two other parks in DuPage County -- have real-life connections to major world events.
Jon Ripsky remembers being a teenager looking outside a second-floor bedroom window of his family's home in the 1950s and seeing large, concrete caverns dug into the ground just off of Diehl and Mill Roads.
At the height of the Cold War, Americans lived in fear that Soviets would drop an atomic bomb. So in 1953, the Army began building Nike air defense systems around 40 U.S. cities, with 18 of the sites in and around Chicago. The deadly missiles and the radar designed to identify foreign planes were considered the last line of defense for Americans.
Two other Nike missile sites were constructed in DuPage, one at the western boundary of Addison, the other on land then owned by Argonne National Laboratory at Cass Avenue and 91st Street, near Lemont.
