NIKE Missile Base SL-40, Beck Road between Nike & M Roads, Hecker, Monroe County, IL

Significance: Constructed during the Cold War, Nike missile bases were an ever-present reminder to U.S. citizens that the peace gained after World War II was fragile. Following the war, the U.S. Army constructed Nike air defense systems around forty U.S. cities and military installations as protection against air attack by the Soviet Union. At its peak in 1963, the Nike defense system included approximately three hundred batteries in the U.S. All of the based have been deactivated and many destroyed. This Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documents the role of Nike Missile Base SL-40 in the defense of St. Louis, Missouri. Base SL-40 was one of five Nike installations that comprised the St. Louis (SL) Air Defense System, which was activated in June 1959 and deactivated in January 1969. four bases, including SL-40, served as batteries. The fifth base, Scott Air Force Base, served solely as the system headquarters. Although the missile equipment has been removed, Nike Missile Base SL-40 is one of the few remaining Nike batteries that exists almost in its entirety, and has been preserved through its use as a vocational school. Nike Missile Base SL-40's farmland surroundings have also changed little since the battery's construction in the late 1950s, and the base typifies the isolation and unobtrusive low-scale construction of most Nike missile installations.
Survey number: HAER IL-117