Havre Air Force Station is located 37 mile north of the town
of Havre and about 10 miles south of the Canadian border. It can be reached by
heading northwest on Highway 232 (Wild Horse Trail) 16 – 18 miles to St Johns,
then east for a couple of miles, and north about 6 miles to the site. You can
also head straight north on St Joe road and then turning to the site. The
community of Simpson, situated a few miles west, is the original namesake of
the radar station.
The Tech Ops site was located in the NE quarter of Section
35, Township 37 North, Range 1 East, and the main Administration Support site
in the NE quarter of Section 18, Township 36 North, Range 14 East, in Hill
County.
After deactivation as an AC&W site in 1979, a $5 million bomb score site renovation was done by SAC in 1985 – 86, and about 70 personnel and their families were moved from a facility near Babbitt, Nevada to the Havre site. Under the command of Maj. Fred Henthorne, their mission was to operate the Strategic Training Range Complex, which electronically scored the performance of Air Force B-52s and FB-111s as they flew simulated low-level bombing missions through a ten-mile wide corridor extending from Powell, Wyoming to Havre. Mobile radar units tracked the targets as they passed through the corridor, with the resulting information processed and scored.
After closure of the facility a few years ago, Montana
Senator Conrad Burns sponsored a bill in 1998 to turn the base over to the
private sector and the Bear Paw Economic Development Council. Houses are being
moved to Havre to be used as transitional and low-income housing. Buildings are
being moved to the Rocky Boy Reservation for the Box Elder School District, and
the Fort Belknap Reservation for the Hays Lodgepole School District. Design and
implementation of a treatment system providing potable water from the four
existing wells on the site is being carried out. It will be used by a number of
small agricultural producers who have joined in a company named Premium Pork of
Montana for the purposes of running a hog farm. Documents concerning these
actions are a 24-page Decision Document and a 36-page Environmental Assessment
for Disposal of Havre Air Force Station.
Information was provided by Francine Brady, reference
Librarian of Havre-Hill County Library; Laura Thompson of the Havre Field
Office of the BLM; and retired Smsgt Ed Vasecka.
Dick
Konizeski