If you've watched a few episodes and feel like I've earned it, be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any new content when it comes out. Also be sure to check out The Gettysburg Museum of History and their store at gettysburgmuseumofhistory.com.
My great-grandparents had to give up their property near Neosho, MO, for the building of Camp Crowder. Interestingly, some of the streets on the base were named after ours and other families displaced. After the war, when the size of the base was reduced, they were offered and bought their property back. Camp Crowder was later used by Rocketdyne for building and testing rocket engines. Although the upper part of the test stands are removed, the underground concrete structures are used today by the National Guard for training, classrooms, and emergency shelter.
I hunt in Weldon springs. There are numerous unkept cemeteries scattered throughout the area. Remnants of old building structures also dot the area. The place is kind of spookie. There’s an eeriness that still lingers to this day.
We live only a few miles from the "rock pile." Our kids went to Francis Howell High School in the 2000s, just a few years after the cleanup. This site was also home to WWII German prisoners of war. The last of the housing quonset huts were torn down only a few years ago. The Weldon Spring area has a fascinating history. The name "Howell" is almost synonymous with that part of St Charles County. This area along Hwy 94 is basically the gateway to St Charles County wine country.I enjoyed the video.
@TheHistoryUnderground Thank you for highlighting the area. My dad ran the Weldon Springs Army Reserve base (right next to the giant mound of chat) for a while, and I currently live relatively close. There are a few other interesting historical locations close by, the Daniel Boone house, and all the Lewis and Clark locations along the Missouri River to name a few. Keep up the good work!
Very interesting episode. With the start of the US involvement in WWII, the Government mobilized production of war materials in several locations. One similar ammunition sire was Hastings, Nebraska. The US Naval Ammunition Depot (known as NAD) was located in Adams and Clay counties in Nebraska. It occupied almost 49,000 acres. Like in Missouri, the Government seized the land from local farmers and ranchers. It was a huge economic boom for Hastings as thousands of workers moved to the area. Storage bunkers were built east of Hastings along US Highway 6. This gave good accessibility to the road network in the area. Also, the Burlington Railroad’s mainline was not far away. During WWII, the NAD, supplied approximately 40% of all naval munitions for the US. The NAD was reactivated in the 1950s during the Korean War. The Hastings Museum offers bus tours in the fall and spring of the NAD and sites in the city of Hastings that were important during WWII.
The official name for those bunkers is Earth Covered Magazines (ECM). They are made of reinforced concrete covered in at least two feet of earth. Depending upon the design, they could hold 500,000 lbs of net explosive weight (NEW). They are sited at various distances depending upon how much NEW they will contain to prevent propagation, ie the effect of one exploding then causing an adjacent one to explode and so on. The weakest part of an ECM is the front (the headwall). Regarding the huge block in front of the door, those were often called a "King Tut Block". It was a security measure to prevent easy access through the front door. It took a forklift to move them. They were often used at locations that had high security items, such as chemical munitions and "special weapons" (nuclear material). ECMs like those are still in use at various locations.
Growing up we used to play in the bunkers while in the area doing some fishing. Great to get some context on the bunkers! You should do the Saint Charles river front next. Starting point for Lewis and Clark
All those times I drove near the area and never knew it was there. You may have covered it already but nearby is the home where Daniel Boone lived his final years and died. Thanks for covering the Weldon Spring site.
We did grave rubbings at that cemetery. This was part of the school field trip. Sadly that is probably why those stones are so faint. The schools stopped the rubbings a while ago.
In the early 1980s a relative of mine lived across State Hwy 12 from the Badger Ammunition Factory south of Baraboo, Wisconsin. I was very impressed with the size and scope of that facility.
I grew up across the river from Weldon Springs back in the '60's. I remember when it was operating and I also remember all of the nuclear waste warning signs that were everywhere along HWY 94 heading through the area. There were small ponds that were fenced off to keep people out due to the waste. That was a huge facility. They've done a remarkable job of cleaning it up. The old barracks were along 94 at the high school for years. They were used as classrooms, I believe. I think they've been torn down now. When my wife and I got married our first house backed up to Times Beach and we could see the stacks from the incinerator when it was in operation. The St. Louis area has a long history of these sorts of problems. Have you done anything on the nuclear waste issues in North St. Louis County yet? They come from the same time period and the for the same reasons. And now there is an underground fire burning at the landfill where a lot of nuclear waste is buried with no way to stop it. The cancer rates in that area and along Coldwater Creek are incredible.
@@TheHistoryUnderground There used to be piles of nuclear waste tarped over and fenced in, yet still quite visible to the public, tucked into all sorts of nooks and crannies around Lambert Field. We would drive by them quite often. A lot of the waste in North County was generated by the Manhattan Project and Cold War activities by Mallinkrodt at their facility on North Broadway, if I'm remembering correctly but I'm sure there was some from Weldon Springs in the mix, too. I've even see a movie of a complete tractor trailer filled with waste being buried where the dump fire is happening. They just dug a hole, drove it in and buried it, tractor included. There is a documentary available on RUclips titled "Atomic Homefront". It is a really good overview of all of this and what's happening now. It was released in 2017. Senator Hawley has been trying to get some relief for the people that live up there.
I went to that high school 76-80 and we had classrooms in some of the old WWII buildings. And we had parties in some of those old bunkers. And some of them even held civil defense supplies All the doors have been basically sealed up of the public's safety. The ones you can get into or have not been sealed, are used as storage for the Bush Wildlife area & stat of Mo Dept of Conservation officers
Graduated from Howell in 97. We used to make jokes about drinking radiation water. Couldnt have been that healthy to go to school there. Skipping school and wandering Busch wildlife and the bunkers was fun though
Brought back alot of memories from Germany. That was my Mos. 55 bravo ammunition specialist. My platoon took care of 50 bunkers. Every thing from blasting caps to artillery rounds. No nukes.
The hubby and I love your videos! We also have a bunch of those bunkers here in Southern Illinois. They are now a part of the Crab Orchard Wildlife Refuge and they will let you tour them certain times of the year. There was also a lot of old cemeteries that we got to see on the tour as well, it was very interesting to see first hand!
Got some good news and some bad news. Good news is that I love all the content you have on here. Bad news is that I’m burning through all of them too fast and will be caught up pretty soon. So I’m gonna need you to do me a solid and just start pumping out a couple of new episodes a day please. Lol. You guys keep up the good work. There’s many WW2 channels on YT and most of them are very good, but I enjoy yours the best.
Amazing video as a kid who grew up watching 90s history channel I love everything history thanks for making content that I will be able to show my boys as they grow.
Went to Hazelwood Central same time frame, nearby Coldwater Creek declared a Superfund site too, used to work in Earth City just down hill from the Bridgeton dump...what we did not know back then, but we rode bikes with out helmets and drank out of garden hoses...
In high school I used to go shooting at Busch Wildlife's range. Sometimes afterwards, I would go explore the ruin of a huge concrete building that was just off 94. It was just kind of a shell of pillars and girders. I assume it was part of the old WWII infrastructure as it wasn't fenced off back in the mid 80's or the fencing was so breached that you could drive up to it from 94. A lot of the bunkers inside Busch Wildlife had doors that could be opened at that time, so it was often fun to drive the gravel trails there and explore the bunkers that you could open. Ironically, I never heard about Weldon Spring being part of the nuclear program at one time until after they began the cleanup. I guess that since it was expensive to police the area and at that time it was still pretty rural, they just figured not advertising the area was hazardous would prevent people coming to check it out for the most part. If teens and young adults in the area had known more about it, you might have had more people wanting to explore the area.
I was there like 47 or 48 yrs ago when I was i high school. went to Busch's wild life on I ended up going in one of those bunkers had not thought about it in a long time thanks for sharing
The bunkers were never used for storing TNT or DNT. It was in so much demand that they never had a surplus to store. I have done a lot of reading info on this site and Lone Elk park. Cold Water Creek and the dump site of uranium off old St. Charles rock road. Thank you to all that added a little more info on the history of Weldon Springs. I have also look up and found much on some of the families that once had farms snd homestead there.
Grew up in the area. Graduated in 88 from Howell. Was kinda weird to look out a classroom window and see dudes walking around in contamination suits and Geiger counters. Used to store grain in those bunkers in the 60-80's. Got drunk in several of those bunkers.
Outstanding work brother. We live nearby and we will be visiting the site. We will also be in Gettysburg in mid June. Thanks for all that you do for us.
If the Army training site is still in operation the TNT Factories are still there. I think that there are 3 of them. Last time i was there was 1984. My stepfather was in charge of it back then. Me and my friends spent the weekends doing ops training with green berets. Rumors has it that 2 small boxcars full of gun are hidden in a tunnel somewhere near the public shooting range .
Really cool vid man!! I just forwarded this to my father who is a huge History buff and I know that he will appreciate it even more than I did. Cheers! 😎
St.louis made ammunition during ww2. The plants were east of Weldon Springs. Off of highway 70 and Goodfellow Blvd. I worked in one of those plants when McDonnel Douglas used it for storage. Their was also a factory that made bombs (torn down) close to the ammunition plants. I wander if there is a connection between the two?
I use to re-enact there back in the 80's. The factory was there then but closed and had warning signs up. The bunkers and power plant factory (which is dug into a hill and had a railroad going over the top, were great places to "fight around". Most of the bunkers are gone now.
Another area like this is now “Lone Elk Park” in St Louis County. It was used to test ammunition, mainly 50 BMG I believe. There are a few bunkers, a shooting tower, and a target trap.
US Navy veteran here. I was on the US Kilauea AE -26 ammo ship out of Oakland San Francisco. In 1979 I left the boat for 6 weeks to go to nearby Concord for Munitions transport certification and Forklift training. Many bunkers covered with grass and the hills were strangely hilly due to years of earthquakes. It was an experience. And on the boat you could smell the explosives even in an empty hold. Careful where you smoke.
Bunkers like this dotted the "flyover" country. At Illioplis, IL the buildings and stacks existed for years and were clearly visible from I72. Loaded onto boxcars on the nearby Wabash mainline (St. Loius - Chicago or Detroit)
I've worked at two facilities that were built at the same time and has these same bunkers. At both of the sites I worked they were called igloos and I was told they start out at about 2 feet thick at the base and get down to 1 foot thick at the top so that if there is an explosion it goes up and reduces the chance of setting off the other igloos or anything that might be outside being moved in or out. At the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon there actually was an explosion that completely destroyed the igloo and left a crater you cans till see today. The spacing is about 10 to a row which I'm told is a mile long and staggered from one row to the next to maintain that minimum spacing while still taking up the least amount of land possible. There's also usually 10 rows to a "block" with a large space between blocks and each block is given a letter designation. So "A-block", "B-block" ect. Over the years they have been used to store all kinds of munitions for various conflicts and some of the sites were used to store and destroy chemical weapons such as the Umatilla Chemical Depot I mentioned earlier.
It’s really interesting seeing the WWII sites here in the States. I really know next to nothing about them, but they were hugely important. Cold War era factoid: my high school had a nuclear bomb shelter under it
Love Busch wildlife, go there almost every weekend, some doors used to be open on the bunkers but kids have vandalized and now they are all welded shut
It must be nice being able to travel and see all the different places that we hear about in the history books, I’m a history nerd myself. You should check out some battleships
i took a Hunter Safety class out there at Welden Springs back in 1979-1980 (we called it Busch Reserve). Lots of bunkers back off those dirt roads. We also used to hunt out at there too. Good times
I grew up when the armory was dealing with the influx of radioactive materials and still cranking out explosives. The city of saint Louis had several munitions plant that ran 3 shifts up through Vietnam. Much of the explosive were used locally oddly like farms today.
Man I felt your pain with the mosquitoes. Worst place I’ve ever been for mosquitoes was Sweeney Texas. I always tell people that when I arrived, the little buggers tried to carjack me in the parking lot! There were so many they traveled in squadrons , and they were so big they had tail numbers and landing lights! 😂
My dad was a student there in the 70s and 80s and when he went there he said that the water was undrink bale water. The school that he talks about in the video, that was the original school be for they built 2 more schools with the same name. My dad is 57 now and he said the original school was a WW2 air hanger for planes. Today there are over 100 bunkers throw trails they have throw the forest and there is the Missouri conservation there with lots of ponds. It a place to go and you will have fun their.
I only live 40 minutes from Weldon Springs and I never knew any of this was there. Definitely going to have to make the trip to see all of this for myself!
Massachusetts has a bunch of these as well. They held ammunition. They were strategically placed so they were safe from naval bombardment (in the event that occurred) and were hidden using forestry to avoid detection from the air. You can walk around them and in a couple. It's a nature preserve now.
These bunkers remind me of pulling 6 hour roving guard at the Meisau location in Germany. They WERE still being used for storage of all types of munitions.
I live 15 minutes away. Strange seeing part of where I grew up being documented. You see St. Louis stuff all the time, but not over here in St. Charles county. Thanks!👍
Busch Wildlife, it was purchased by Augusta Busch and donated it to be used as a Wildlife preservation area, back at the end of World War 2. We use to run our beagle trials back in the 50's, and I was a young kid. Nuclear waste was brought in later in the 60's.
Bunkers like those are in several locations around the country where munitions were made and stored. Nebraska as them by Mead, the Lincoln airport, Hastings, Grand Island, Sidney and other places where bases and plants were constructed.
You should check out the WW2 Bunkers in northern Union County PA where the town of Alvira was before the government displaced the town. These bunkers are circular in shape. It used to be called the Susquehanna Ordnance Depot. Some of those bunkers are available to be seen on the State Gamelands side. The whole Alvira and the government story is an interesting. And they never got their land back either.
Been there several times. I also have air pipes out in the fields. I know a lady that used to work after she told us a lot of weird stories about this place.
I live in central Illinois. There is a WW2 site between Springfield & Decatur, IL in the of town of Illiopolis. I believe it was a munitions factory and storage area. Some of the buildings are still there. Most of the bunkers have been taken down and the ground reclaimed. But that has happened in the last 10 years. Most were still there before that. Dekalb seed company used a lot of the buildings for seed corn production and processing.
Great video JD. I agree with you people should never put graffiti on historic structures. I just finished cleaning confederate headstones full of disrespectful graffiti.
We have a WWII bunker in Huntington Beach, CA. When I was a kid, we would play around it all the time. Not sure if it's still there or not. It's located not too far from Huntington Beach High School - my ol stomping grounds.
Hello! Been watching a while now love the videos! I am a local of the area (st Charles county) and was just deep diving into a lot of history about all of this. Awesome you got to see the history and if you ever come back/ want to do more I’d like to shoot you the info I’ve found maybe!
I just went through here maybe 2 months ago, a few are open and you can walk through them (not allowed) but there’s also remnance of the 3 towns pre WW2. One of my friends grandpa (store in Howell) appeared in the video as well couldn’t believe it
Great video! I've been there several times for training and always wondered about the "pile." Have you ever been to the Pythian Castle in Springfield, MO?
I reached out awhile back but they denied my request to come and film there. They were concerned that if I showed their place on film, then no one would want to come and see it. 🤷🏻♂️
Was the spacing between bunkers for safety purposes? Kind of like "fire stops" (for lack of better terms) similar to spacing hazardous materials out between rail cars? It seems like a lot of extra work & time transporting the ammunitions to areas so far apart!
There is a single, albeit larger, underground bunker out near Colby, Kansas. Back in the 1980's, it was a beer hall / pool hall. IIRC it was called The Dugout.
I was watching this, and my wife asked what it was. She then asked if I could hear the cicadas. She was surprised when I told her no. My tinnitus is so bad that I can barely hear them when I'm outside. We live less than 15 minutes from Weldon Springs. It's a very interesting place. Bush Wildlife has several fishing lakes, and a gun range very close by.
@@TheHistoryUnderground Going to get worse too. Brood XIX and Brood XIII are emerging this year in multiple states, they have not emerged at the same time since 1803.
I saw a you-tube documentary about a plant that decommissioned old ordinance like bombs grenades etc, that exploded 😮. The bunker was exactly like the one you showed. It contained the explosion except the doors were blown off.
Just outside of St. Louis on I-44 is Lone Elk Park. WWII military site with lots of bunkers and structures. Mallinckrodt is responsible for contamination of north StLouis, cold Water creek and another quarry dump site/landfill near Lambert Airport
Should you ever want to explore camp crowder in neosho MO I can talk to some people. At one time they tested rocket engines there and some of the tunnels are still accessible. It was also a major WW2 training camp a one time. A couple of the original barracks are still there.
If you've watched a few episodes and feel like I've earned it, be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any new content when it comes out.
Also be sure to check out The Gettysburg Museum of History and their store at gettysburgmuseumofhistory.com.
Thank you for doing what you do I think you need to come to southern Illinois our nickname is little Egypt I pray this fines you in good health 🙏
“Jimi and Emmie, I hope you two broke up right after this.” That got me 😂
😂
J.D.: "People learn from their mistakes.."
Also J.D.:"Except for Jimi and Emmie. They can go to hell."
They're probably cousins.
Just what I came here for!😂
My great-grandparents had to give up their property near Neosho, MO, for the building of Camp Crowder. Interestingly, some of the streets on the base were named after ours and other families displaced. After the war, when the size of the base was reduced, they were offered and bought their property back.
Camp Crowder was later used by Rocketdyne for building and testing rocket engines. Although the upper part of the test stands are removed, the underground concrete structures are used today by the National Guard for training, classrooms, and emergency shelter.
Camp Crowder was also a POW camp during WWII.
@Bim310 Yes. There was two separate camps.
I hunt in Weldon springs. There are numerous unkept cemeteries scattered throughout the area. Remnants of old building structures also dot the area. The place is kind of spookie. There’s an eeriness that still lingers to this day.
Me too and I have been inside one of the bunkers
@@chasenewhouse305sure is fun to stand on top of that mound lol
I told my wife we need 2 go grave digging
We live only a few miles from the "rock pile." Our kids went to Francis Howell High School in the 2000s, just a few years after the cleanup. This site was also home to WWII German prisoners of war. The last of the housing quonset huts were torn down only a few years ago. The Weldon Spring area has a fascinating history. The name "Howell" is almost synonymous with that part of St Charles County. This area along Hwy 94 is basically the gateway to St Charles County wine country.I enjoyed the video.
It’s great you do the off-the-beaten-path stuff too! Please keep doing these.
More to come!
@TheHistoryUnderground Thank you for highlighting the area. My dad ran the Weldon Springs Army Reserve base (right next to the giant mound of chat) for a while, and I currently live relatively close. There are a few other interesting historical locations close by, the Daniel Boone house, and all the Lewis and Clark locations along the Missouri River to name a few. Keep up the good work!
Wow! Thanks!
My grandmother was a Howell, and she was born in Missouri. Thanks for highlighting this area.
Oh wow! Glad I could go there and share a bit of the story.
Dang, the cicadas are loud! I second Jimmy and Emmie breaking up.
😂
Very interesting episode. With the start of the US involvement in WWII, the Government mobilized production of war materials in several locations.
One similar ammunition sire was Hastings, Nebraska. The US Naval Ammunition Depot (known as NAD) was located in Adams and Clay counties in Nebraska. It occupied almost 49,000 acres. Like in Missouri, the Government seized the land from local farmers and ranchers. It was a huge economic boom for Hastings as thousands of workers moved to the area.
Storage bunkers were built east of Hastings along US Highway 6. This gave good accessibility to the road network in the area. Also, the Burlington Railroad’s mainline was not far away.
During WWII, the NAD, supplied approximately 40% of all naval munitions for the US. The NAD was reactivated in the 1950s during the Korean War.
The Hastings Museum offers bus tours in the fall and spring of the NAD and sites in the city of Hastings that were important during WWII.
The official name for those bunkers is Earth Covered Magazines (ECM). They are made of reinforced concrete covered in at least two feet of earth. Depending upon the design, they could hold 500,000 lbs of net explosive weight (NEW). They are sited at various distances depending upon how much NEW they will contain to prevent propagation, ie the effect of one exploding then causing an adjacent one to explode and so on. The weakest part of an ECM is the front (the headwall).
Regarding the huge block in front of the door, those were often called a "King Tut Block". It was a security measure to prevent easy access through the front door. It took a forklift to move them. They were often used at locations that had high security items, such as chemical munitions and "special weapons" (nuclear material).
ECMs like those are still in use at various locations.
Ahhhh. Thanks for the extra info!
Growing up we used to play in the bunkers while in the area doing some fishing. Great to get some context on the bunkers! You should do the Saint Charles river front next. Starting point for Lewis and Clark
On my list.
All those times I drove near the area and never knew it was there. You may have covered it already but nearby is the home where Daniel Boone lived his final years and died. Thanks for covering the Weldon Spring site.
We did grave rubbings at that cemetery. This was part of the school field trip. Sadly that is probably why those stones are so faint. The schools stopped the rubbings a while ago.
In the early 1980s a relative of mine lived across State Hwy 12 from the Badger Ammunition Factory south of Baraboo, Wisconsin. I was very impressed with the size and scope of that facility.
Interesting
I grew up across the river from Weldon Springs back in the '60's. I remember when it was operating and I also remember all of the nuclear waste warning signs that were everywhere along HWY 94 heading through the area. There were small ponds that were fenced off to keep people out due to the waste. That was a huge facility. They've done a remarkable job of cleaning it up. The old barracks were along 94 at the high school for years. They were used as classrooms, I believe. I think they've been torn down now.
When my wife and I got married our first house backed up to Times Beach and we could see the stacks from the incinerator when it was in operation. The St. Louis area has a long history of these sorts of problems. Have you done anything on the nuclear waste issues in North St. Louis County yet? They come from the same time period and the for the same reasons. And now there is an underground fire burning at the landfill where a lot of nuclear waste is buried with no way to stop it. The cancer rates in that area and along Coldwater Creek are incredible.
Interesting! Haven’t covered anything on North STL.
@@TheHistoryUnderground There used to be piles of nuclear waste tarped over and fenced in, yet still quite visible to the public, tucked into all sorts of nooks and crannies around Lambert Field. We would drive by them quite often. A lot of the waste in North County was generated by the Manhattan Project and Cold War activities by Mallinkrodt at their facility on North Broadway, if I'm remembering correctly but I'm sure there was some from Weldon Springs in the mix, too. I've even see a movie of a complete tractor trailer filled with waste being buried where the dump fire is happening. They just dug a hole, drove it in and buried it, tractor included.
There is a documentary available on RUclips titled "Atomic Homefront". It is a really good overview of all of this and what's happening now. It was released in 2017. Senator Hawley has been trying to get some relief for the people that live up there.
I went to that high school 76-80 and we had classrooms in some of the old WWII buildings. And we had parties in some of those old bunkers. And some of them even held civil defense supplies
All the doors have been basically sealed up of the public's safety. The ones you can get into or have not been sealed, are used as storage for the Bush Wildlife area & stat of Mo Dept of Conservation officers
Graduated from Howell in 97. We used to make jokes about drinking radiation water. Couldnt have been that healthy to go to school there. Skipping school and wandering Busch wildlife and the bunkers was fun though
That’s funny to hear, I graduated in 23 and we all still made the same joke!
Brought back alot of memories from Germany. That was my Mos. 55 bravo ammunition specialist. My platoon took care of 50 bunkers. Every thing from blasting caps to artillery rounds. No nukes.
The hubby and I love your videos! We also have a bunch of those bunkers here in Southern Illinois. They are now a part of the Crab Orchard Wildlife Refuge and they will let you tour them certain times of the year. There was also a lot of old cemeteries that we got to see on the tour as well, it was very interesting to see first hand!
Got some good news and some bad news. Good news is that I love all the content you have on here. Bad news is that I’m burning through all of them too fast and will be caught up pretty soon. So I’m gonna need you to do me a solid and just start pumping out a couple of new episodes a day please. Lol. You guys keep up the good work. There’s many WW2 channels on YT and most of them are very good, but I enjoy yours the best.
Ha! Thanks.
Amazing video as a kid who grew up watching 90s history channel I love everything history thanks for making content that I will be able to show my boys as they grow.
Very interesting. Love the old cemetery and that there are some war of 1812 vets buried there. Pretty cool 👍
👍🏻
Thanks for a great video. Important to keep all history alive.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I went to Francis Howell High School in the early 70s. Explored many of those bunkers over the years.
Went to Hazelwood Central same time frame, nearby Coldwater Creek declared a Superfund site too, used to work in Earth City just down hill from the Bridgeton dump...what we did not know back then, but we rode bikes with out helmets and drank out of garden hoses...
@@michaelrapier339 I grew up there also
In high school I used to go shooting at Busch Wildlife's range. Sometimes afterwards, I would go explore the ruin of a huge concrete building that was just off 94. It was just kind of a shell of pillars and girders. I assume it was part of the old WWII infrastructure as it wasn't fenced off back in the mid 80's or the fencing was so breached that you could drive up to it from 94. A lot of the bunkers inside Busch Wildlife had doors that could be opened at that time, so it was often fun to drive the gravel trails there and explore the bunkers that you could open. Ironically, I never heard about Weldon Spring being part of the nuclear program at one time until after they began the cleanup. I guess that since it was expensive to police the area and at that time it was still pretty rural, they just figured not advertising the area was hazardous would prevent people coming to check it out for the most part. If teens and young adults in the area had known more about it, you might have had more people wanting to explore the area.
I was there like 47 or 48 yrs ago when I was i high school. went to Busch's wild life on I ended up going in one of those bunkers had not thought about it in a long time thanks for sharing
Thank you. I always enjoy your historic tour videos. You are of great character and do a great honor for celebration of our history.
🙏🏼
The bunkers were never used for storing TNT or DNT. It was in so much demand that they never had a surplus to store. I have done a lot of reading info on this site and Lone Elk park. Cold Water Creek and the dump site of uranium off old St. Charles rock road. Thank you to all that added a little more info on the history of Weldon Springs. I have also look up and found much on some of the families that once had farms snd homestead there.
Many of those bunkers are in Busch Wildlife area just down Hwy.94 from Weldon Spring. Converted to fall out shelters during the Cold War.
Grew up in the area. Graduated in 88 from Howell. Was kinda weird to look out a classroom window and see dudes walking around in contamination suits and Geiger counters. Used to store grain in those bunkers in the 60-80's. Got drunk in several of those bunkers.
Outstanding work brother. We live nearby and we will be visiting the site. We will also be in Gettysburg in mid June. Thanks for all that you do for us.
Have fun!
If the Army training site is still in operation the TNT Factories are still there. I think that there are 3 of them. Last time i was there was 1984. My stepfather was in charge of it back then. Me and my friends spent the weekends doing ops training with green berets. Rumors has it that 2 small boxcars full of gun are hidden in a tunnel somewhere near the public shooting range .
The bugs in you video made me think the dang cicadas outside decided to go nuts for no reason. Lol great video as always
Really cool vid man!! I just forwarded this to my father who is a huge History buff and I know that he will appreciate it even more than I did. Cheers! 😎
Awesome! Thank you. Be sure to catch the one right before this episode too. It goes into more depth about the site.
St.louis made ammunition during ww2. The plants were east of Weldon Springs.
Off of highway 70 and Goodfellow Blvd. I worked in one of those plants when McDonnel Douglas used it for storage.
Their was also a factory that made bombs (torn down) close to the ammunition plants. I wander if there is a connection between the two?
Yep. Check the episode right before this one. Link in the description.
I use to re-enact there back in the 80's. The factory was there then but closed and had warning signs up. The bunkers and power plant factory (which is dug into a hill and had a railroad going over the top, were great places to "fight around". Most of the bunkers are gone now.
Does the name Marvin Rittenour sound familiar.
@@johnniekane6315 sorry no, but it has been a long time ago.
Another area like this is now “Lone Elk Park” in St Louis County. It was used to test ammunition, mainly 50 BMG I believe. There are a few bunkers, a shooting tower, and a target trap.
US Navy veteran here. I was on the US Kilauea AE -26 ammo ship out of Oakland San Francisco. In 1979 I left the boat for 6 weeks to go to nearby Concord for Munitions transport certification and Forklift training. Many bunkers covered with grass and the hills were strangely hilly due to years of earthquakes. It was an experience. And on the boat you could smell the explosives even in an empty hold. Careful where you smoke.
Bunkers like this dotted the "flyover" country. At Illioplis, IL the buildings and stacks existed for years and were clearly visible from I72. Loaded onto boxcars on the nearby Wabash mainline (St. Loius - Chicago or Detroit)
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100% Agree it is vandalism not graffiti
Definitely.
I hope you sprayed up well for ticks. That area always had an abundance when we did WWII reenactments at the Army Training Area.
Most interesting. I totally agree about defaming these historic properties. It is disrespectful. I enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching!
I already want to go just by the name of the video! And as a Missourian none of these places are all that far
You should!
The cicadas are so loud there! We are having a massive brood be very vocal in Missouri right now. Great video.
Always enjoy your explorations and treks. These are my favorite episodes. Of course, I avoid the head bumps and mosquitos. lol
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I've worked at two facilities that were built at the same time and has these same bunkers. At both of the sites I worked they were called igloos and I was told they start out at about 2 feet thick at the base and get down to 1 foot thick at the top so that if there is an explosion it goes up and reduces the chance of setting off the other igloos or anything that might be outside being moved in or out. At the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon there actually was an explosion that completely destroyed the igloo and left a crater you cans till see today. The spacing is about 10 to a row which I'm told is a mile long and staggered from one row to the next to maintain that minimum spacing while still taking up the least amount of land possible. There's also usually 10 rows to a "block" with a large space between blocks and each block is given a letter designation. So "A-block", "B-block" ect. Over the years they have been used to store all kinds of munitions for various conflicts and some of the sites were used to store and destroy chemical weapons such as the Umatilla Chemical Depot I mentioned earlier.
It’s really interesting seeing the WWII sites here in the States. I really know next to nothing about them, but they were hugely important.
Cold War era factoid: my high school had a nuclear bomb shelter under it
Been there!! Grew up in St Louis County, a lot of history in the area.
Thanks for sharing J.D. God bless you brother!!✌️🇺🇲
Love Busch wildlife, go there almost every weekend, some doors used to be open on the bunkers but kids have vandalized and now they are all welded shut
Be careful for the copperheads. I’ve seen quite a few in the creek beds and even a few crossing the roads. Use to fish there almost daily for years
It must be nice being able to travel and see all the different places that we hear about in the history books, I’m a history nerd myself. You should check out some battleships
i took a Hunter Safety class out there at Welden Springs back in 1979-1980 (we called it Busch Reserve). Lots of bunkers back off those dirt roads. We also used to hunt out at there too. Good times
"I hope you two broke up right after this" LOL great video!
😂 Dang graffiti.
I grew up when the armory was dealing with the influx of radioactive materials and still cranking out explosives. The city of saint Louis had several munitions plant that ran 3 shifts up through Vietnam. Much of the explosive were used locally oddly like farms today.
Thanks JD... its always a great day when I get your notifications .. History at its best ?
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Another great and informative video, thanks JD for creating and sharing 🫡
this is my stomping grounds! so ahppy to see you in our area!
Man I felt your pain with the mosquitoes. Worst place I’ve ever been for mosquitoes was Sweeney Texas. I always tell people that when I arrived, the little buggers tried to carjack me in the parking lot! There were so many they traveled in squadrons , and they were so big they had tail numbers and landing lights! 😂
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My dad was a student there in the 70s and 80s and when he went there he said that the water was undrink bale water. The school that he talks about in the video, that was the original school be for they built 2 more schools with the same name. My dad is 57 now and he said the original school was a WW2 air hanger for planes. Today there are over 100 bunkers throw trails they have throw the forest and there is the Missouri conservation there with lots of ponds. It a place to go and you will have fun their.
Well, now i get deeper info all around my house now! Thanks my dude!
I only live 40 minutes from Weldon Springs and I never knew any of this was there. Definitely going to have to make the trip to see all of this for myself!
Definitely!
Massachusetts has a bunch of these as well. They held ammunition. They were strategically placed so they were safe from naval bombardment (in the event that occurred) and were hidden using forestry to avoid detection from the air. You can walk around them and in a couple. It's a nature preserve now.
These bunkers remind me of pulling 6 hour roving guard at the Meisau location in Germany. They WERE still being used for storage of all types of munitions.
Thank you for another great video.
Thanks for watching!
Wow the cicadas are loud there! Thank you for the video🙋🏻♀️
When I was a kid, some of those used to have open doors you could walk into. Pitch black and echos forever if you dropped a pin inside there.
Man I love Busch wildlife. Such a nice site with a great history.
The Cicada's are buzzing!
100%
So fun love history adventures!!
I live 15 minutes away. Strange seeing part of where I grew up being documented. You see St. Louis stuff all the time, but not over here in St. Charles county. Thanks!👍
Busch Wildlife, it was purchased by Augusta Busch and donated it to be used as a Wildlife preservation area, back at the end of World War 2. We use to run our beagle trials back in the 50's, and I was a young kid. Nuclear waste was brought in later in the 60's.
Bunkers like those are in several locations around the country where munitions were made and stored. Nebraska as them by Mead, the Lincoln airport, Hastings, Grand Island, Sidney and other places where bases and plants were constructed.
You should check out the WW2 Bunkers in northern Union County PA where the town of Alvira was before the government displaced the town. These bunkers are circular in shape. It used to be called the Susquehanna Ordnance Depot. Some of those bunkers are available to be seen on the State Gamelands side. The whole Alvira and the government story is an interesting. And they never got their land back either.
I hope you did a really good tick check when you got out of there. As always, thanks for the great content.
Been there several times. I also have air pipes out in the fields. I know a lady that used to work after she told us a lot of weird stories about this place.
I live in central Illinois. There is a WW2 site between Springfield & Decatur, IL in the of town of Illiopolis. I believe it was a munitions factory and storage area. Some of the buildings are still there. Most of the bunkers have been taken down and the ground reclaimed. But that has happened in the last 10 years. Most were still there before that. Dekalb seed company used a lot of the buildings for seed corn production and processing.
I love videos like this. Love seeing things that are different. Thank you
There are bunkers in the elk reserve too. South country. Interesting, I live next to Weldon and never knew about this. Thks
Great video JD. I agree with you people should never put graffiti on historic structures. I just finished cleaning confederate headstones full of disrespectful graffiti.
Appreciate your work in cleaning that stuff.
Great video!! I couldn`t tell if all that noise was from your Cicadas or the ones outside my door.
We have a WWII bunker in Huntington Beach, CA. When I was a kid, we would play around it all the time. Not sure if it's still there or not. It's located not too far from Huntington Beach High School - my ol stomping grounds.
Again a very interesting video. Thank you for everything you do.
Awesome was hoping you were going to stop by here
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Hello! Been watching a while now love the videos! I am a local of the area (st Charles county) and was just deep diving into a lot of history about all of this. Awesome you got to see the history and if you ever come back/ want to do more I’d like to shoot you the info I’ve found maybe!
I just went through here maybe 2 months ago, a few are open and you can walk through them (not allowed) but there’s also remnance of the 3 towns pre WW2. One of my friends grandpa (store in Howell) appeared in the video as well couldn’t believe it
What a shame to see some of those bunkers vandalized
Great video! I've been there several times for training and always wondered about the "pile." Have you ever been to the Pythian Castle in Springfield, MO?
I reached out awhile back but they denied my request to come and film there. They were concerned that if I showed their place on film, then no one would want to come and see it. 🤷🏻♂️
Was the spacing between bunkers for safety purposes? Kind of like "fire stops" (for lack of better terms) similar to spacing hazardous materials out between rail cars? It seems like a lot of extra work & time transporting the ammunitions to areas so far apart!
I am sure that this is the reason. I wonder if the internal walls of the bunkers are angled to direct the blast upwards.
Yes. If one bunker blew up, it wouldn’t trigger a secondary explosion.
Really enjoyed the video mate can't wait for the next one
There is a single, albeit larger, underground bunker out near Colby, Kansas. Back in the 1980's, it was a beer hall / pool hall. IIRC it was called The Dugout.
I was watching this, and my wife asked what it was. She then asked if I could hear the cicadas. She was surprised when I told her no. My tinnitus is so bad that I can barely hear them when I'm outside. We live less than 15 minutes from Weldon Springs. It's a very interesting place. Bush Wildlife has several fishing lakes, and a gun range very close by.
The combination of my own tinnitus and the cicadas means that I can't hear jack outside right now.
Them cicadas be chatty 😂
Thanks for taking us along.
Oh man. It was loud.
@@TheHistoryUnderground Going to get worse too. Brood XIX and Brood XIII are emerging this year in multiple states, they have not emerged at the same time since 1803.
Lots of storage bunkers in Busch Wildlife adjacent to your location.
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I saw a you-tube documentary about a plant that decommissioned old ordinance like bombs grenades etc, that exploded 😮. The bunker was exactly like the one you showed. It contained the explosion except the doors were blown off.
Outstanding video, Sir.
Just outside of St. Louis on I-44 is Lone Elk Park. WWII military site with lots of bunkers and structures.
Mallinckrodt is responsible for contamination of north StLouis, cold Water creek and another quarry dump site/landfill near Lambert Airport
Poor Jimi and Emmie! 😊
Their love is nuclear. 🤷🏻♀️ ☢️
Poor Jimi and Emmie need to proclaim their love in less destructive ways.
There is a similar site north of Montreal where various ordnance were stored during WW2. No nuclear waste just conventional weapons.
great to see nature making a comeback 🌲🌲🌲
Should you ever want to explore camp crowder in neosho MO I can talk to some people. At one time they tested rocket engines there and some of the tunnels are still accessible. It was also a major WW2 training camp a one time. A couple of the original barracks are still there.