Southern California Mystery Building

April 19, 2011 9:34 PM

What is this ocean side Southern California building?

It's within a circularly graded piece of land, surrounded by three fences (two of which are unusual) and there is nothing around it. Even stranger is that just north of it is a grid of named city streets with building lots demarcated but virtually no buildings.

On one hand this can't be too secret of a place since its plainly visible and a half mile from a YMCA camp but at the same time this piece of property must be worth a small fortune.

posted by mmascolino to Travel & Transportation around California (8 answers total)

Best answer: It's a decommissioned HF direction finding site, known to the military as "The Elephant Cage," and it's on the site of the Silver Strand Training Complex (SSTC, pronounced "stick").
posted by illenion at 9:47 PM on April 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Silver Strand Training Complex
posted by Confess, Fletch at 9:47 PM on April 19, 2011

It may be this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Special_Warfare_Advanced_Training_Command

The address seems to match, or be very close, and there seems to be an anchor on display in the back yard.
posted by lych at 9:48 PM on April 19, 2011

Or.. i could be completely wrong. :]
posted by lych at 9:48 PM on April 19, 2011

it's an elephant cage antenna array
posted by thewalrus at 9:57 PM on April 19, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks much for indulging my curiosity.
posted by mmascolino at 10:06 PM on April 19, 2011

interesting. so how does it function now since the wiki site says it's decommissioned?
posted by zombieApoc at 5:47 AM on April 20, 2011

It's currently used as classrooms for military courses.
posted by illenion at 5:57 PM on April 20, 2011