Atavistic wrote: Maybe you've been hanging out here too much:
I actually have hung out there quite a lot - its really a neat multi-use park. Huge (over 4500 acres), it is the site of what was to have been the USAF Air Defence Command airbase for the Chicago-Milwaukee metroplex. Named for area native Richard Bong, WWII fighter ace, the central feature would have been a 12,500-foot main runway with a parallel 10,000-foot secondary runway, along with several taxiways, parking pads, and access roads. The hangars and other mission-critical support facillities were to be underground. The regional Air Defense Command airbase project was cancelled and defunded at the end of the 1950s; with $Millions already spent and numerous structures and underground facilities built or under way, construction at Bong was halted just days before concrete was to have been laid for the runway complex. Though never finished, and today not open to the public, some of the underground facillities still exist, used as garage, maintenance and storage areas for park equipment and supplies - they're cavernous.
Here's an aerial view showing what remains of the runway layout:
(This was taken late autum 2001. North is just about 35 degrees to the right of straight up, the top-left-to-bottom-right diagonal equals roughly 3 miles.)
And here's a current Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources map of the park:
The long diagonal road at the top of the dark gray area runs along the main runway route.
Link to Park's Website
