Bald Head Cliff Base-End Station - Location 152

B12/2 S12/2 Fort Dearborn

1950s postcard view (cropped) of the Cliff House Hotel with Base-End Station on right, facing the ocean.

This three-story concrete tower with attached two-story cottage was completed in April 1944 on a leased 0.37 acre site as a Base-End Station for Fort Dearborn (B12 S12 for Battery 103/Seaman and AAIS OP 11). Searchlight position #19 was located just east of the station. A concrete-block pump house with a 6000 gallon storage tank was built behind (west of) the cottage, disguised as a one-car garage. A swimming pool was later built in 1960 adjacent to the station. The station was dismantled in 1964 for construction of a new section of the hotel. The swimming pool was later relocated. The hotel has since been greatly expanded to cover most of the original grounds, covering over the site of the station.

Early 1960s postcard showing the Base-End Station and the early swimming pool.
The pumphouse has been demolished in this view (exposed dirt patch just to the left of the station).

The Cliff House Hotel once had their own wooden lookout tower just to the south of the Army station for the use of hotel guests, which actually pre-dated the war. It was probably used by the Army in 1942 before the Army observation station was completed. The hotel was ordered closed during the war. The Army left in 1946, and the hotel was reopened for guests in 1948.

(NOTE: No US Army coastal defense radar was located here during WWII. The US Navy and Air Force did use several of the old base-end stations in the 1950s for coastal defense observation and experimental radar testing platforms, which may explain the local tradition of this also being a radar site. This author has not, however, found any evidence to confirm this report for this location.)

GPS for Location 152 Benchmark (OC2158) - N 43° 13.252 W 070° 34.595 (NAD 83)
(about 200 feet west of the shore, 150 feet west of the east cliff face and about six feet south of the range of the south face of the Cliff House Hotel.
The Base-End Station was about 200 feet north of the Loc. 152 Reference Mark 1 (OC0467) - N 43° 13.250 W 070° 34.600 (NAD 83).)

Located at the Cliff House Hotel on Bald Head Cliff Road, Bald Head Cliff, Ogunquit, Maine.

History of the Cliff House Hotel

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