Intro
The Story of a Ten-Thousand Acre Bomb
Fences sometimes feel more like things to keep the history inside, rather than historians out. Past the dead-end back-Indiana-road, the prodigal son of the military-industrial complex sleeps under a growing, moving blanket of foliage and fog.
We had come in under the dead high-tension lines, just in time to watch this abandoned slice of 1941 wake up as twilight burned away. The smoky blue-grey lifted from the tips of evergreens, sending ricochets of razor-sharp streaks of yellow and orange through ten thousand acres of dusty windows.
The largest abandonment in North America.
Concrete Stripes in Eagles’ Eyes
Dew-soaked boots made good time, trooping the overgrown production line avenues and the rough-rust railroads that crisscrossed the strange urban forest. As the sun grew in the sky, the cool haze lifted as a single cloud and hurried away to tuck-in some history over west. Someday I’ll follow that cloud, but that morning I was content with the maze of overhead steam pipes and emergency slides.
As the eagles overhead see it, this place, known collectively as INAAP, or the Indiana Army Ammunitions Plant, is a series of concrete stripes burrowed into a forest of new growth. The strings of industrial shells duplicate and reduplicate hundreds of times farther than the eye can see.
