Homey Airport

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Homey Airport (ICAO: KXTA), also known as Groom Lake, is a highly classified remote detachment of the more publicly known Edwards Air Force Base located near Lancaster, California.

Homey Airport is itself located within Lincoln County, Nevada. The facility has cemented itself in popular culture as Area 51, but has also been variously referred to as Dreamland and Paradise Ranch, among others.

Due to the classified nature of the base, its functions and purpose are not public knowledge and, therefore, many conspiracy theories involving black projects, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and experimental aircraft have arisen to explain the facility's presence.

Etymology

Geography

Groom Range

Groom Lake

History

The area which would become known as Area 51 has a multifaceted history spanning back to the 1850s.

Early Prospecting Activity

In 1859, the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver-mining district in the United States, sparked a silver rush of prospectors to the area and its environs, being the greatest event of its kind since the California Gold Rush of 1849.

However, prospecting activities would not begin in the Groom Range until 1864, when lead-silver discoveries were made in its southern portions. It is thought that many of the small gold occurrences in the north of the range were prospected around the same time. A few years later, in 1870, a copper-silver deposit in the southeast of the district was discovered.

Several parties and surveying groups would pass through the area in the mid-19th century. In 1869, the Wheeler Survey passed through the land on their first general reconnaissance of the West. Their party camped at Summit Spring, southeast of the Groom district, on their way north. Wheeler and his party returned in 1871, during which time the group's geologist, G. K. Gilbert, visited the Groom mine and recorded what are now considered the first observations of the local geology.

It was in 1869 that the Groom mining district was organized and in 1871, the Groom mines began being the first worked in that area (although they were then known as the Conception Mines). Early accounts of the district described mines located on the western slopes of Tempaiute Peak (Bald Mountain) and stated that silver chloride ores were being produced in 1870. It would be in the early 1870s that the name "Groom Mine" would supersede the name "Conception Mines" as a direct result of the English financing company Groome Lead Mines Limited. However, the mines were only worked until around 1874, due to a small, unrecorded production.

Osborne Era

J.B. Osborne[1] and his partners acquired the claims to the Groom Mines in the mid-1870s, patenting them in 1876.

In the 1890s, Osborne's son T.J. acquired these interests.

In June 1916, those claims were incorporated as the Groom Nevada Lead Mines Company and as the Groom Southend Mining Company. In order to maintain the claims, Osborne worked the mines yearly, as in concordance with federal mining law. Reports by mining engineers at the time provided enough promise of possible discoveries to maintain long-term interest in the Groom mining district.

The property was leased to several operators over the years, including L.L. Patrick and Tom McCormac.

However, after T.J. Osborne's death in 1918, the lessees withdrew and the mine was closed.

Later Claims

Operations in the mines resumed in 1922, with ore being shipped from 1922 until 1924.

The Sheahan brothers purchased the mine in 1937 and continued to work it until 1942.

However, production at the mine ceased during the second World War, only renewing after the conflict had ceased. the Sheahan family continued to work the property intermittently, but was frequently interrupted by nearby atomic testing.

The mine closed permanently in the early 1950s.

Indian Springs Auxiliary Field

In 1942, the airfield at Groom Lake began service as an the first auxiliary field of Indian Springs Army Airfield. It was located on the east side of Groom Dry Lake and consisted of two unpaved 5,000 foot[2] runways aligned NE/SW, NW/SE[3].

Government Acquisition

The top officials of the Development Projects Staff surveyed many potential testing sites for the U-2 in California and Nevada where such an aircraft could be tested not only safely, but in secrecy as well.

On 12 April 1955, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. and the senior Air Force officer on the project staff, Colonel Osmund Ritland, flew over Nevada with Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Tony LeVier, Lockheed's chief test pilot. The group spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground.

After some debate, LeVier set the plane down on the lakebed, and the four of them examined the strip in detail. The airstrip was in fact the first auxiliary field of Indian Springs Army Airfield, which, after nearly a decade of disuse, had turned from compacted earth into ankle-deep dust. It has been thought that if LeVier had attempted to land on the airstrip, the plane would have nosed over when the wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring the men on board the craft.

The four colleagues agreed that Groom Lake would be an ideal site for testing the U-2 and training its pilots. However, after returning to Washington, D.C., Bissell learned that Groom Lake was not actually part of the AEC proving ground.

After consulting with Allen Dulles, Bissell and Herbert Miller asked the AEC to add the Groom Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Admiral Lewis Strauss readily agreed to their proposal and President Eisenhower approved the addition of the strip to the Nevada Test Site.

To make the facility sound more attractive to his workers, Kelly Johnson called it the "Paradise Ranch," which was soon shortened to the "Ranch."

The U-2 Project

Project OXCART

References

  1. Jonas Brown.
  2. 1,524 meters.
  3. Specifically, the site was located at 37°16'35"N 115°45'20"W.

External Links

References

No adequate sources have been found so far.