Did the Navy Build Secret Undersea Lairs for Its Nuclear Submarines?

A story you may have never heard about…until now. 

bySteve Weintz

In the 1970s the Los Alamos National Lab investigated an atomic rock-drilling concept called the Nuclear Subterrene, which like Rock-Site sounds like something out of Johnny Quest, but also really happened. One wonders what might have happened had the Navy put its nuclear expertise to work drilling holes in the ocean floor. The Rock-Site concept also bore much in common with NASA’s designs for underground moon bases. Very likely all three concepts — invulnerable bastions, space outposts and ocean bases — would have shared solutions to issues ranging from environmental control to crew morale.

Point Sur is 600 feet of tough rock facing Pacific rollers that come 6,000 miles to pound the central California coast. Like the 19th-century lighthouse that marks the Point, the now-derelict compound of the former Naval Facility Point Sur evokes another era.

And it evokes a mystery — one involving secret underground naval bases, high-tech submarines and Cold War nuclear brinkmanship.

As late as the 1960s, Navy technicians and their families at Point Sur monitored undersea listening posts used to track Soviet subs. According to one legend, it wasn’t merely hydrophones the Navy ran from Point Sur, but submarines themselves based in giant man-made caverns dug into the rock.

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