1987 | Clark Dry Lake, San Diego County
First a dry lakebed, then an aerial gunnery range during the Second World War, this topography was a dream layout for radio astronomers seeking a ‘flat’ plane closely matching the curvature of the earth. This particular place even had gently eroded edges, which gave an opportunity to build an extended antenna system optimally equidistant from the center of our planet.
So it caught the eye of Convair (later General Dynamics) which built a preliminary array for studying radiation from the stars and planets. Later, the University of Maryland acquired the site and constructed a new two-mile-long T-shaped array of some seven hundred conical spiral antennas, and it was bringing in significant new data by the early 1970’s.
San Diego has been advantageous for research into the heavens; this site is just 60 miles northeast of that city and 35 miles east of Mt. Palomar, with its splendid 200-inch telescope. It has been a good place from which to look out, and to listen in.
Not long after I made this picture of these remnants of the Clark Lake facility, the last vestiges of the antenna array were removed and the lakebed became a dry camp and off-road attraction. I do remember a University of Maryland story describing the recruiting process for attracting grad students to work at this desolate facility: “Hey, who would like to spend the summer in California?”