- Location
- West Haven, UT
The wife and I just returned from spending much of last week in the Swell. The San Rafael Swell has quickly become one of our favorite places to visit as there is such a diverse and interesting landscape to enjoy.
As I've aged I feel less need to prove anything by climbing over rocks and rather enjoy the long drives taking in the scenery, as well as I have a hard time beating on my Jeep and want to keep it nice for many more years to come.
Those trails that are rock after rock and boulder after boulder have become less appealing to me, but I do like a few obstacles thrown in here and there to play on and work the Jeep's suspension. Maybe that's why the Swell has quickly become one of mine and the wife's popular areas to travel to.
I'm sure many of you may be well versed in the San Rafael Swell area but the wife and I have only been going for about 3 years now. Granted, I've logged quite a few miles in the area in that short amount of time and have become very familiar with the general area but that only has revealed to me that there is so much we haven't seen. For this trip I did a bit more research to find some out of the way things to see and explore a few areas of the Swell that the wife and I are less familiar with.
Enjoy the pictures.
Jeep hooked up to the coach and ready to hit the road.
We arrived mid-afternoon and immediately unhooked the Jeep and took off exploring. I had read about the Utah Launch Complex weeks before and the wife and I set out to find it. The Utah Launch Complex was a missile testing site in central Utah that was built in 1961 and went fully active in 1962 and remained active until mid 70's (1973 or 1975 I find both dates of when it was officially shut down). Then in 1986 it was dismantled and what you see in the next few pictures are how it remainds today. It is fully fenced off however, the gates were open so we went inside the area to explore.
The buildings are in complete ruin, but it was interesting to envision what they were like in the mid 60's when they were fully operational.
This was an interesting structure. The building itself was on rails and appears it could move back and forth along the tracks and concrete slab. My thinking was that they build the rockets/missiles inside this structure which had a huge overhead trolly style of crane and then was able to move towards the concrete pad at the end of the track which was the launch pad.
Here is the door at the other end of the structure along with the rails visible in the concrete.
At the far right of the picture you can see the concrete pad above ground. This was actually the launch pad and had steel structures bolt together that held the missile for launch.
These are the metal structures in which I envisioned bolting together to create the missile holding apparatus for launching.
The "rack" seen in the picture appears to guide something along the rails parallel to it.
Here are several pictures I found of what it looked like when fully operations from the mid 1960's.
More pictures to follow.
As I've aged I feel less need to prove anything by climbing over rocks and rather enjoy the long drives taking in the scenery, as well as I have a hard time beating on my Jeep and want to keep it nice for many more years to come.
Those trails that are rock after rock and boulder after boulder have become less appealing to me, but I do like a few obstacles thrown in here and there to play on and work the Jeep's suspension. Maybe that's why the Swell has quickly become one of mine and the wife's popular areas to travel to.I'm sure many of you may be well versed in the San Rafael Swell area but the wife and I have only been going for about 3 years now. Granted, I've logged quite a few miles in the area in that short amount of time and have become very familiar with the general area but that only has revealed to me that there is so much we haven't seen. For this trip I did a bit more research to find some out of the way things to see and explore a few areas of the Swell that the wife and I are less familiar with.
Enjoy the pictures.
Jeep hooked up to the coach and ready to hit the road.
We arrived mid-afternoon and immediately unhooked the Jeep and took off exploring. I had read about the Utah Launch Complex weeks before and the wife and I set out to find it. The Utah Launch Complex was a missile testing site in central Utah that was built in 1961 and went fully active in 1962 and remained active until mid 70's (1973 or 1975 I find both dates of when it was officially shut down). Then in 1986 it was dismantled and what you see in the next few pictures are how it remainds today. It is fully fenced off however, the gates were open so we went inside the area to explore.
The buildings are in complete ruin, but it was interesting to envision what they were like in the mid 60's when they were fully operational.
This was an interesting structure. The building itself was on rails and appears it could move back and forth along the tracks and concrete slab. My thinking was that they build the rockets/missiles inside this structure which had a huge overhead trolly style of crane and then was able to move towards the concrete pad at the end of the track which was the launch pad.
Here is the door at the other end of the structure along with the rails visible in the concrete.
At the far right of the picture you can see the concrete pad above ground. This was actually the launch pad and had steel structures bolt together that held the missile for launch.
These are the metal structures in which I envisioned bolting together to create the missile holding apparatus for launching.
The "rack" seen in the picture appears to guide something along the rails parallel to it.
Here are several pictures I found of what it looked like when fully operations from the mid 1960's.
More pictures to follow.
