Just north of Moriarty, New Mexico, a few feet off of state highway 41, stands a weathered old building surrounded by dozens of bizarre looking radio antennas and towers. Far from the polar icecaps, in the middle of the New Mexico desert sits ICE Station Otto. While traveling across this part of the state we noticed this roadside oddity and had to stop and investigate.
What is/was ICE Station Otto?
Sometime in the 1930’s the Otto Intermediary Airfield was established at the site. Later some HF (high frequency) radio equipment was installed here as part of an early FSS or flight service station to communicate with cross-country flights. Sometime after the 1960’s the land was purchased by an Albuquerque based firm called Val Comm Inc, which apparently did contract work for Sandia Laboratories up until the early 2000’s.
The sign indicates the facility was used for “Ionosphere Communication Experiments”, but little is known of the type of work the firm conducted for Sandia Laboratories.
At some point the property was purchased by an amateur radio operator, who installed several large ham radio antennas.
We stopped in at a small convenience store just down the road and asked if anyone knew more about the place. “I once saw lightning hit the tower when I was driving by.“, the older lady at the checkout told us. “It’s been for sale for a while, bit of an eyesore if you ask me.“, commented another local who’d overheard my question.
A Few Guesses As To The Purpose Of The Facility
The only information on ICE Station Otto that we could find was a few mentions in amateur radio forums, speculating on its original purpose. The facility may have been a part of the US Army’s Ground-Mobile Command Centers, an “over the horizon radar” facility, long range radio spying station or simply a research-based Ionospheric Communications Experiments facility, as indicated by the sign.
New Mexico Full Of Unusual Roadside Oddities
From roadside markers indicating the location of the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated, to ATLAS-I, the word’s largest wood and glue structure, designed to test the resistance of flying aircraft to EMP (electro-magnetic pulses), there’s no shortage of unusual things to see in New Mexico.
On this trip we also visited the Los Lunes Decalogue Stone, also know as the New Mexico Mystery Stone, which is located on state land west of Los Lunes. There someone carved a message in ancient Greek and Phonecian characters, (according to one translation), detailing the story of a desperate man exiled from his faraway homeland and lost in the wilderness.
The stone carvings near Los Lunes are either very ancient, or are part of an elaborate hoax which may have been perpetrated in more modern times, either in the 1930’s or late 1800’s.
Like the Decalogue Stone of Los Lunes, the true history of ICE Station Otto will probably always remain a mystery, which is just fine with us!
Resources:
https://groups.io/g/coldwarcomms/topic/mysterious_ice_station_otto/83680947?20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,0,83680947
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Mobile_Command_Center
https://jbcrawford.us/notes/otto
