(note: the following text is excerpted from this article that details the history of wendover airforce base. the photos were taken may 8, 2007 by me)
Wendover Air Field, along the Utah-Nevada border about 100 miles west of Salt Lake City, was the training site for the 509th Group prior to their mission over Japan to drop the atomic bombs in 1945. On 01 January 1979 the Hill and Wendover Ranges, and part of the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, were consolidated into the Utah Test and Training Range and placed under the management of the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base.

By late 1943 Manhattan Project scientists were confident enough to tell the Army Air Forces (AAF) to begin preparing for the atomic bomb’s use. At that time, the AAF decided that the B-29 Superfortress aircraft would be the delivery vehicle. It also selected one of its most able aviators, Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., to form and train a group devoted solely to dropping the device. He selected the remote Wendover Army Air Field (AAFld), Utah, as the training site. The 509th’s training was to be completely shrouded in the deepest secrecy, therefore the desert isolation of Wendover Field was ideal. In September 1944, Colonel Tibbets moved the squadron to Wendover. From November 1944 to June 1945 they trained continually for the first atomic bomb drop. In April 1945, Colonel Tibbets declared the group ready and moved to its new home, North Field, Tinian, the Marianas. By June 1945, the entire group had arrived and once again, it entered a period of intense training. Not until well after the war did the United States Air Force officially admit that the 509th had trained at Wendover Field.


…A mock enemy city was constructed near the mountains on the base using salt from the nearby Bonneville Salt Flats. This made a fine practice target for the many bomber crews, as did the life-sized enemy battleships and other targets elsewhere on the range. Many of the targets were even electrically illuminated for night practice. Various machine gun ranges allowed gunners to either fire at moving targets from stationary gun emplacements or fire at stationary targets from three machine guns mounted on a railroad car moving along a section of track at up to 40 miles per hour (Wendover’s famous “Tokyo Trolley”). Wendover’s realistic challenges for aerial gunners and bombardiers caused them to become the best trained in the world.

By late 1943 there were approximately 2,000 civilian employees and 17,500 military personnel at Wendover. Construction at the base continued for most of the war, and by May 1945 the base consisted of 668 buildings, including a 300-bed hospital, gymnasium, swimming pool, library, chapel, cafeteria, bowling alley, two movie theatres, and 361 housing units for married officers and civilians.
…In August 1961 the Air Force inactivated Wendover Air Force Auxiliary Field, with Hill AFB assigned “caretaker status” for the installation. Then in August 1977 Hill AFB turned over most of Wendover Air Force Auxiliary Field to the town of Wendover, Utah, retaining only a 164 acre radar site on the old base. The military career of this remote yet important airfield was at an end.

It is always interesting when you are traveling and you arrive at a destination in the dark of night.
When you arrive to an unfamiliar location during daylight hours, the visual characteristics of the space slowly reveal themselves to you as you approach. You are already visually acclimated to the landscape, and as you see your destination in the distance you can slowly piece things together as you approach; what the land looks like, what the sky looks like, what the buildings look like, etc, one thing at a time. The details slowly reveal themselves as they come into view, allowing you to get your bearings and piece things together step by step.
But when you arrive at a new location in the dark of night the experience is very different. You are not sure what the landscape looks like or what is on the horizon. Are there mountains out there, or rolling flatlands or forest? The world takes on the false yellowish-color of projected light, and everything outside the wash of street lamps or headlights is tucked away in a blanket of darkness. The world becomes more immediate and reduced to pools of artificial light, and everything beyond the reach this light disappears until tomorrow.
I arrived in Wendover around midnight, first passing through the rather well lit Nevada side of town where the casinos are and then into the very barren and dark Utah side where the old air base is located. Guided in by cell phone and a vague memory of an online map of the base that I looked at days earlier, I eventually found The Residence Support Unit tucked away among rows and rows of abandoned barracks. “The Unit,” a 12″x60″ mobile structure that was originally owned and used by a construction company, but has since been acquired by The Center for Land Use Interpretation and renovated by the fine folks of SIMPARCHand now serves as a sort of “residence hall” for the visiting artists. Exhausted from the eleven hours of driving and feeling a bit disorientated in the darkness of the Utah desert, I was eager to get the mini van parked and get to bed. Upon finding my set of keys and getting situated, I took Tess for a short walk then quickly fell asleep. It was exciting to go to bed not knowing what I would see the next morning outside my bedroom window.

(my first morning i woke up before sunrise and walked outside to find this view directly behind the Unit. I then climbed to the top of the tower and watched the sunrise. the structure in the photo below is ‘the unit’, the airstream is ‘the extra bedroom’)

If I know a little bit about something, but haven’t seen it, I like to imagine what I think it looks like, and then, upon seeing it, compare my imagined version with the reality that is revealed. It is kind of like a game; usually I am very far off and my pre-conceived images look nothing like what they turn out to be. But occasionally I surprise myself and come very close with my visual predictions.
That said, I was a little overwhelmed when I woke up Monday morning and able to see the world surrounding me. I had an idea of what this place was going to look like, but had no idea to what extent. The sun was hot and bright and revealed horizons so far away that you’d swear you could see the curvature of the Earth. Immediately behind The Unit is an old runway, a control tower, and a giant, rusting hanger that used to be home to the Enola Gay. In the 1940s the Wendover Airfield was one of the biggest and most important airforce bases during WWII. It was a top-secret facility hidden out in the desert and is where bomber squads, including the ones that dropped atomic weapons on Japan, did their training. But after shutting down in the late sixties, the sprawling base now sits in a state of decay. The buildings are weathered and falling down, but because of their historical significance, and obvious economic challenges, it seems like nobody has the heart or resources to actually bulldoze them. The base has been empty for over 30 years, ownership has changed hands several times, and the local economy is so bad that this derelict compound is able to just sit here in a sort of suspended animation as the world around it waits to decide what to do with it.
So far I am pretty amazed and overwhelmed by it all. So many directions to point the camera it is kind of driving me crazy.

(view from the tower overlooking the runway and off towards the salt flats)

for the next two weeks i (along with Tess the toothless wonder-dog) will be doing an “artist residency” in wendover, utah, at the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
today (day one) was a very long 760 mile drive and now it’s past midnight, but i am eager to wake up tomorrow morning and start exploring (the residency is on an old abandoned air-force base. my kinda place for sure). while here i will be writing, taking lots of pictures, and working on the next installment of future so bright.