Cape Lisburne Long Range Radar Station (Wevok, AK)

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Constructed from June 1951 through December 1952 atop the abandoned native village of Wevok, AK, the Cape Lisburne Air Force Station was one of the most remote and logistically challenging radar construction efforts undertaken in the statewide effort to establish a permanent air defense system. Constructed in phases to take advantage of the brief 3-month summer the station consisted of two camps; a lower camp which contained a power/heating plant, water and fuel storage tanks, support office buildings, dormitories and recreation buildings and a top camp which was the location of the AN/FPS-3, AN/FPS-20A and an AN/FPS-93A radar systems and support structures. The two camps were connected by a winding 4-mile road which was often impassible much of the year, and an aerial tramway which operated year-round.

With construction on the top camp completed in October of 1952, the first personnel from the 711th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron began to arrive at the station, which officially went online on December 8th, 1952. Working in conjunction with the Air Force Stations at Kotzebue and Point Barrow, the site monitored its portion of the Chukchi Sea and Arctic Ocean for Soviet aircraft for over 30 years. Joining the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line in 1955 as the Main Station in its own sector of DEW Line stations, five of which stretched up the Alaskan coastline to Point Barrow, the site grew to house the additional men and officers required to maintain and operate the remote early warning sites.

Communications from the site to the Air Defense Direction Center at Murphy Dome Air Force Station were augmented in 1957 by the co-location of a White Alice Communication System (WACS) tropospheric scatter communications site, which linked the site to the rest of the WACS system by means of a 167 mile shot Southeast to the Kotzebue WACS site and to the DEW Line initially by a 58 mile shot to the LIZ-A site at Cape Sabine and later a 97 mile shot to LIZ-2 at Point Lay. Cape Lisburne was one of two direct links between the WACS network and the troposcatter communications network used in the DEW Line.

Operational in its AC&S role into the 1980's, the site was augmented in 1983 by the addition of a AN/FPS-117 minimally attended long range radar system under the USAF Sleek Igloo program, which once online made the manned mission at Cape Lisburne AFS redundant. Though the WACS site remained in operation by Alascom through the 1994 closure of the Point Lay DEW Line site, the rest of the station was shut down on November 1st, 1983 and the majority of the infrastructure was locked up and abandoned.

Following the end of the Cold War and the transfer of the LRRS operation to the 11th Air Force, the site was one of several Cold War-era sites identified for environmental remediation under Operation Clean Sweep, which commenced in 1998. Site remediation on the top camp and the majority of lower camp buildings at Cape Lisburne began in 2001 and completed in 2002, with all hazardous materials being removed and all non-haz materials landfilled onsite.

radomes.org/museum/showsite.php?site=Cape+Lisburne+AFS%...
lswilson.dewlineadventures.com/liz1.htm
www.mhfls.com/transloader/0205/alaska.html
www.firebirds.org/menu10/mn10_p63.htm
www.afcee.brooks.af.mil/ec/eiap/nepa/capelisburne/FERLi...
culturalheritage.uaa.alaska.edu/uivvaq/Docs/newsletter....