Finley Air Force Station Site, North Dakota

The Finley Air Force Station was General Surveillance Radar Station, part of network of dozens of radar facilities of different types that monitored the nation’s northern perimeter for potentially hostile aircraft, especially ones coming over the poles from Russia. Finley was activated in 1951, as a ground control intercept radar site. It became part of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system in 1959. Its systems were upgraded many times over the years, until the facility was transferred to the FAA in 1979, and then closed in the 1990s. The site was declared surplus and sold at public auction in 2000, and most of its dozen or so structures have been demolished. There were four “gap filler” radar sites associated with Finley facility, each of which was unmanned and had a single radar array connected by cable to Finely. These structures remain, abandoned in place.