Photo: New Runway at Groom Lake

I was flying between Phoenix and Reno, was lucky enough to get a window seat on the right side of the airplane, and recognized a certain dry lake bed in the distance and I snapped dozens of 20x zoom, 10 megapixel photos of it as we flew by. Looking through the photos later, I noticed a runway laid out in the dry lake bed. At first I thought it was one of the old runways 03, 09, 21, & 27. But after comparing it to Google Earth's latest imagery, I realized it's not even close. This runway is much closer to the base side of the dry lake and doesn't show up in the latest imagery in Google Earth. I took this photo less than 12 hours ago:



Actually, I made it into an overlay in Google Earth and it seems to be exactly the same orientation and length as one of the old runways, but moved SSE about 1 mile. Any thoughts?

[edit on 15-6-2010 by shmuu]

Any other maps or pictures of that old runway you could also compare it too? I'm
not too familiar with the facility's layout or anything, but I know google maps are prone to errors from time to time.

reply to post by shmuu


Dear shmuu

It looks to me like one of the two runways that have been there for some time, if you go too 37°16'2.46"N 115°49'9.67"W on Google earth you will see what I mean.

I can not imagine why they would try to hide the runway in this day and age if you can just look the whole thing up on the computer from anywhere in the world.

reply to post by MAC269


The runway your coordinates point at is more than a mile into the dry lake.
Those are the old runways I listed in my original post. Look at the photo. It's at the very edge of the lake, against the runoff of the old paved runway. If I can figure out how to upload a kmz here, I'll show you an overlay of that photo so you can compare it to the other runways and see they're nowhere near each other.

The Google images obviously have not been updated lately. When the Dreamland Resort web site acquired satellite imagery taken in June 2009, it was noted that lakebed runway 03-21 had been moved about a mile south of its original location and now crosses runway 09-27 at midfield.


The airstrip may have been moved for one or more possible reasons:

1. To make it more accessible to emergency response vehicles
2. To improve aircraft access between the runway and the main base complex
3. To avoid using the frequently flooded northern end of the lakebed

reply to post by Shadowhawk


Ha, I started typing "dreamlandresort" into Chromium, and the first thing that popped up was dreamlandresort.com/area51/sat_image_2009.jpg . Guess I've seen it before.....although this particular image only shows a sliver of the dry lake bed, hold on...hmmm...I can't find anything on Dreamland Resort about moving runway 03-21, nor can Google, and I can't find anything on Dreamland Resort that shows the dry lake bed in 2009 satellite photos, only the main base. I'm guessing you know where I can find it? I tried googling for anything about it moving in general, and all I found was a post by you last year on this site, talking about how it had moved south 1 mile, which is almost exactly what I calculated in my original post, so I think it's pretty definitive that that's what we're looking at. Darn, I was hoping I'd found something new, but alas, you beat me by almost a year.

Anyway, I took a lot of pictures and I'll post them....somewhere...here? I'm not sure. I guess I'll just tack them on as a reply in this thread unless someone knows of a place for them. I don't suppose they'd belong in the "Pictures from Inside Groom Lake" thread since they aren't. They're taken from very far away, so you can't really see anything significant (though I have seen someone's pictures from Tikaboo on a particularly bad day that were less clear than these. In mine, you can make out some of the larger structures, mainly hangers, runways, that sort of thing, certainly nothing detailed. I'll only post them because of a couple things that make them somewhat unique:
1. They were taken yesterday, so they are very current, some of the most recent if not the most recent photos of the base.
2. They are taken from a unique vantage point. I can't think of any photos I've seen that were taken from this direction. There probably are some, but I can't think of any I've seen, and I've seen a lot.
3. They are a series of 40 pictures taken from a moving vantage point at 32,000 ft. The first picture is taken from approximately 36.40N 116.16W (I'm getting this data from the actual aircraft's reporting during the flight, available at flightaware.com...) with pretty much all of the base visible on the right side of the mountains to its west, and the last photo is taken from approximately 37.12N 117.02W with about half of the base visible on the left side of those mountains. So, the series of pictures make a centered pan of more than 70 miles, making a 65.5 degree sweep around the base. You could probably even tack them together into an animation, rotating around the base. Though, they were actually taken during the recording of a video, so I guess you could just watch that instead. The major benefit to looking at the pictures over the video is that they are higher resolution (3648x2736) than the video (640x480). Of course, the resolution of the pictures might as well be quite a bit lower (1280x960 should be fine) since they're so fuzzy. Now that I think about it, the best thing to do might be to shrink them to 640x480 32bpc HDR images and then adjust them for optimal contrast, but now I'm getting side-tracked.

I had forgotten that Dreamland Resort only posted a cropped version of the image. On the full image, you can see the new runway as well as the old location where the markings have now been removed from the lakebed surface.

Anyone else find it a little bit interesting that with the latest HD image of Groom Lakes runway, there is not one single plane or even proof of life at this runway? I understand that it maybe a secret flight line but no cars, no people, I didn't even see a control tower, although I didn't look too closely.

Indeed, you must not have looked closely. The latest image of the base (August 2011) shows no less than four F-16s on the North Ramp, a Beech 1900C on the King Air Ramp, two 737-600s on the Janet Ramp, and dozens of cars and trucks on roadways and parking lots. There is also a fair amount of new construction including a "hush house" for engine runs and a new water tower.

reply to post by Shadowhawk




Ah yes I see them too... 4 f16s 2 apache's what looks to be a few cargo.

Those are not Apache helicopters. The G.H.O.S.T. Squadron flies two MH-60G Pave Hawks and one UH-60M upgraded Black Hawk. They are used for test support, search and rescue, and range patrol.

reply to post by Shadowhawk


Thanks for the intell I see I have fallen behind on my studies will have to update my data base.

Don't Compare with Google Images, They stated they add in fake buildings and runways so people can't know what it really looks like down to it's skin.

reply to post by misterbananas



Yeah I have always suspected as much....