Tunnel into mountain at NTS

Whats up,


Just browsing google earth and the NTS and located a rather poorly camoflauged tunnel leading into the side of a mountain. You guys probably have seen it before, but I was just wondering if anybody knew what this tunnel is for? Oh, I was reading up on dreamlandresort.com and the owner mentions something about slater lake and how its rumored to be more secret than A51. Does anybody know where this located on google earth?

My google earth is not working so if you go west of A51 to the dry lake bed beneath the nuclear crater field, the facility on the bottom left of lake bed, other side of runway, right above the 2 white storage tanks on top of the mountain, right above those tanks is the road leading into the textured color tunnel leading into the mountain.

reply to post by RyanLA123

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What runway. Yucca Dry Lake?

I geuss? Right below the yucca strip where all the nuke craters are. It has a 19 on it.

This would be much easier if you just provided coordinates.

Anyway, Slater Lake is located at
N37.261671 W115.839420

Oh, and don't believe everything you read on the internet. ;-) It is quite possible the buildings at Slater Lake are located in a place so as to be not disturbed. Perhaps they don't want to be blasted by aircraft. Maybe they need to be away from radios on the base.

I can't find you tunnel entrance. You can poke around the NTS website. The tunnels IIRC have "inflatable" buildings over them. In any event, the NTS tunnel locations are documented.

I wish I could but every time google earth says initilizing it just sits there than it gives me an error report to send or not. So I just went to google maps which is the same thing and found it there.

OK!!! Go west of A51 past Papoose lake to the yucca strip or where all the old nuclear tests were conducting. There is a dry lake bed to the bottom of the nuke craters called what I dont know.

There are 3 facilities there 1 on top 1 on bottom left and 1 on bottom right which has a runway on it with the # 19 or 16 depending on which way you come in.

The facility to the bottom left of the dry lake bed there are a few non-descript buildings and a construction yard. There is also a mountain to the left which has 2 big white storage tanks on top of it.

Right above those white storage tanks maybe an inch or inch an ahalf is cleary a tunnel with a road leading directly into the mountain. It has a texture on top of it to kinda make it blend in with the mountain but its not very good at disguise. Now whats in there WHO KNOWS. You could walk in there and they could storing 55 gallon oil drums or you could walk in there and it would be like the game half-life!

reply to post by RyanLA123

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Is this where you're talking about?



Coordinates: 36°56'6.61"N 116° 3'38.12"W

correct! Right above that is the tunnel. I was wondering if anybody had any info what this tunnel is used for?

It looks more like a bunker than a tunnel. It could have been used for storing explosive materials.

The Yucca Lake airfield, with the new paved runway 01-19 was built recently. There is also an unpaved airstrip on the lakebed that was originally built in the 1950s to support the nuclear testing projects. In recent years, these facilities have been used to test unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Lockheed Martin P-175 Polecat.

Slater Lake was originally a recreation facility for Area 51 employees. The pond was stocked with fish and surrounded by trees. In the 1970s, a complex of actual and simulated Soviet radar systems were built in that area. They are still used for radar cross-section evaluation and electronic countermeasures testing.

Looking at this area, it seems to me the "tunnel entrance" is just the soil from the pad created for the tanks. That is, if you scrape the area to flatten it so that you can place tanks, you need some place to put the dirt. [I hate to keep harping on what do you do with the dirt, but it is a common problem in any construction job.] It looks to me like the dirt was piled up by the facility.

Generally you have three solutions to getting rid of the dirt:
1) off-haul to another site
2) pile it up, maintaining a stable slope on the edges
3) spread it out over a large area
Maybe choice 4 is to use it elsewhere on the job.

I suspect the big dirt berm by the new hangar is from the creation of the pad. Of course, they piled it in a very critical spot for Tikaboo viewers.

No offense gariac, but are you looking at the right coordinates?

36o56'

No offense gariac, but are you looking at the right coordinates?

36o56'16.63'' N 116o03'43.29''w
elevation 4191 feet image 2006

To answer your question about dirt I tend to believe they just crush it down haul it away and spread it over large open area.

I looked at the photograph provided.

Do you mean this structure?
NTS hut

Why is it considered an underground entrance?

It's takes time and money to off-haul the dirt. I;m not sure how you can spread out the dirt without grubbing the site. In the desert, dirt would just blow away. It is far better to stack it up with 3/1 slopes, with the dirt compacted.

One on of my NTS tours, I saw dirt trucks coming from Gate 700, but who knows where they were putting the dirt. When they built the Keno runway, the dirt came from a few miles away.

If you follow the road past "the hut" you will see bunkers spaced all the way along the road. By the way I think "the hut" is just a concrete pad at the entrance to the bunker reflecting light.

While I was searching google earth for these sites I found an intriguing image at these co-ordinates 36.935418, -116.068684 . You can plainly see the shadow of the comm tower but what is casting that parallelogram shadow above it? It just looks odd.

I guess the bunkers are so well disguised I cant see them. ;-)

Regarding the parallelogram shadow, I have looked at this before since went through the NTS logging communication sites. It is baffling to me due to the size. At best, I guess it is the shadow cast by a Microflect. The are many in the hills.

Brock Mtn and Microflect

The general area of this parallelogram is noted as "Building 18" from the FCC database.

The Microflect on Papoose Mountain can be seen at
37.217503° -115.847040°

Cool Gariac! You say you have taken a tour of the NTS. I will take your word for it but I would love to know what you think about other areas of the test site! Everybody loves A51 for some reason when the U2 was never developed there, the SR-71 was never developed there, the F1-17 was never developed there and when it was complete it flew out of TTR, the B-2 was developed at palmdale at plant 42 and never went to area 51.

What is your take on area 19 and the cheshire airstrip?
The tiny little area in the middle of the nuclear wasteland with the pyramid made of dirt and the tube with dirt on it and the structure which is cleary a underground entrance?

The silo door on the dry lake bed of TTR? and this strange area 36o46'47.46''N 115o26'28.48''W and the surrounding area?

Hey, you can take the NTS tour too. There are no restriction, though they need quite a bit of information before you are "cleared." I would like to hear from someone that was not allowed to take the tour. I took it 3 or 4 times. You need to get a tour with no foreigners on it if you want to see CP-1, and trust me, you do. That is the only place with Area 51 acknowledged on the tour. The last tour I took went up to the anti-terrorist training area, complete with fake airplane crash and derailed train car.

The silo door at the TTR is the "hard target".
TTR Odds and Ends

Area 19 is probably nothing other than a location for high yield tests. There is no evidence the Cheshire airstrip exists.

I guess it depends on how strictly you interpret the word developed, but all those planes you mention saw time at Groom Lake.

The area with the waypoint is one of many targets on the Nellis range. That particular one is more elaborate than most. Dog Bone Lake is a live fire zone, though I don't know if everything there is intended to be bombed. They also use phototargets.