UMore Park, Minnesota

UMore Park is a mysterious multilayered R&Dscape of ruins and gated areas. This 12,000-acre area surrounded by farmland south of the Twin Cities has had a variety of uses since 1941, many of which have left interesting vestiges. In WW2 it was hurriedly built as Gopher Ordnance Works, making explosives and employing 3,100 people. After the war, it was mostly (7,500 acres) transferred to the University of Minnesota and redeveloped into Rosemount Research Center, focusing on aeronautic research, working on projects for the military and private companies, like BF Goodrich. Facilities included a major wind tunnel. In the 1960s, the Navy established the Rosemount Naval Satellite Operations Station on the northwest corner of the site, part of a network of satellite control facilities, headquartered at Point Mugu, California (an early form of Navy GPS, the network included stations at Prospect Harbor, ME, Laguna Peak, CA, and the Lincoln Laboratory in Massachusetts). Today research is mostly of an agricultural nature, though the police and others use portions of the site as well. Evidence of the various contemporary and historic uses are scattered around. UMORE means University of Minnesota Outreach, Research, and Education. The university is developing 5,000 acres of the site into a sustainable community of some kind.