Missile warheads were once housed in this structure at the Site Summit launch facility. The Army wants to tear down the structures at the site after recording their layout and history. Officials say the asbestos-laden buildings, leaky bunkers and creaky radar towers present a danger to people who illegally explore and vandalize the site. But historic preservation advocates have countered that the Army is moving too fast. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News) Clamshell structures at the Site Summit battery control building once housed radar equipment. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News) The Site Summit launch area was once home to warheads, storage and launch control buildings and was protected by barbed wire, alarms and guard dogs. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News) The Site Summit battery control building, now dilapidated, housed radar and personnel when it was an active Nike Hercules missile installation. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News) Click on photo to enlarge

On a mountain ridge with an airliner's view of a toy-city Anchorage and surrounding country, the two-story command post and barracks for a historic anti-aircraft missile installation looked like it had been under savage attack.

Shotgun blasts from vandals had punched holes in plywood bolted over windows. A chunk of its outside wall had been peeled off, exposing an interior crawl space. Winter storms had chewed up a roof repair, with the interior ceiling collapsing into a soggy pile on the common room floor.

"That roof repair was supposed to help dry out the interior," Russell Sackett, a cultural and historic resources specialist at Fort Richardson, said as he peered into the building Friday morning. "But it's failed now. I think it bought us two years."

One of three Nike bases rimming Anchorage and its military posts during the Cold War, Site Summit operated for 20 years above Arctic Valley Road with an around-the-clock crew and a mission to blast Soviet bombers from the sky with nuclear-tipped Hercules missiles. One old launch area still contains the rusting tracks for moving the rockets into place, standing just above the holiday star still lit each winter by the Army.

Like other Anchorage Nike bases at Goose Bay and what is now Kincaid Park, Site Summit was shut down in 1979, its missiles made obsolete by deadlier weapons, its buildings abandoned to the wind.

But the site was never forgotten. Microwave communication towers now use its electric grid, and its outer slopes and access road fall within the danger zone of an Army practice range.

It's also been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1996 and touted as a potential park or tourist destination by numerous studies.

Now the Army wants to tear down the structures after recording their layout and history. Officials say the asbestos-laden buildings, leaky bunkers and creaky radar towers present a danger to people who illegally explore and vandalize the site.

But historic preservation advocates have countered that the Army is moving too fast.

"I think we're all saying let's step back and have a dialogue with the military," said Judy Bittner, Alaska's historic preservation officer. "What I would like to see is for the buildings not to be destroyed and give the state and municipality time to figure something out. They could just button it up."

A recent visit by Army officials found new damage at the site. Holes had been made from inside a building, and someone had busted into a transformer shed supplying power to the star and possibly broke the equipment.

"Proposed demolition has been determined to be the best management option," Col. David Snodgrass, the Army's director of public works in Alaska, wrote in a letter to Bittner. "Due to a lack of funding to address appropriate maintenance of unused buildings, the property has gradually deteriorated to a point where it has become a serious liability as well as a security issue."

Despite a task force and market studies, no one has proposed a way to make the site work as a tourist destination given a narrow, dangerous access road and conflicts with Army training at the firing range, officials said. At the same time, no one has identified a source for the millions of dollars needed to stabilize and maintain the buildings.

"We commissioned the task force, and we support their findings," said Army spokesman Maj. Ben Danner. "But nobody is bellying up."

But Bittner and other people argue the site itself has too much cultural and educational value to be torn down. Letters from Bittner, the National Park Service and Anchorage Historic Properties have urged the Army not to raze the structures before discussing the task force's recommendations or other ideas to save them, as required by the National Historic Preservation Act.

The Army has the final say in what happens to the site but intends to follow the process required by the act and will consult with Bittner and other people before taking action, Sackett said Friday.

A federal advisory council that reviews projects involving historic properties has been asked to participate and meetings will likely begin by October, he said. A formal environmental study will follow, said Doug Johnson, the Army's chief of environmental resources.

A project to preserve the site's history will also be completed, possibly for display at another park like Kincaid, Sackett said. "Regardless of where we go with Site Summit, I think we will still explore that. The story needs to get out."

In her letter to the Army, Bittner said she was concerned that Army officials had already concluded that demolition was unavoidable, even though the task force had recommended the site become a park affiliated with the National Park Service. Another recommendation was for the Army to work with the Alaska Division of Parks and Anchorage to develop a land-use plan for the Arctic Valley area, long popular for berry picking, hiking and skiing at the volunteer-driven Alpenglow resort.

"In the end, they can still demolish the site," Bittner said last week. "But they must follow the process first. ... It's partly a way of educating the public."

Other people made the same plea.

"Alaska continues to lose its Cold War-related sites at an alarming rate," wrote Marcia Blaszak, Park Service acting regional director.

Anchorage Historic Properties also wants the Army to keep the buildings intact, wrote executive director Craig Harpel.

"It's a remarkable historic site, and it needs to go through the environmental and public process," he said last week. "I think that's bound to happen."

The Nike system was designed to use a radar to locate and track attacking Soviet bombers, then guide a supersonic surface-to-air Hercules missile to blow them from the sky. The 10,400-pound missiles had a range of 87 miles and could carry a huge explosive weapon or a nuclear warhead. The Pentagon acknowledged that some Alaska Nike missiles carried nuclear tips in an official history released in 1999, and Sackett identified a bunker overlooking Alpenglow as the place where the warheads were stored at Site Summit.

The proposal to transform the entire site into a Cold War historic park owned by the Army but managed by the National Park Service might work, if ultimately chosen by the Army, then authorized and funded by Congress, said Linda Cook, superintendent of affiliated parks in Barrow and Dutch Harbor.

"It's something that's in the interest of Anchorage to talk about," she said. "The link between the history of the military in Anchorage and Alaska and the residents here is a very poignant history."

Sackett and Johnson said the Army contacted the Park Service in 2001 but had been told the agency had no funding or interest at the time. A similar proposal to state parks had been rebuffed, they said.

"What we're hearing now is 180 degrees different," Sackett said. "We've written them to ask for a clarification."