It is no surprise that Camp Hero (Montauk Air Force Station) is the most requested topic to research in the Montauk Library Archives. The former military base, turned state park, is not only brimming with lore and legend, but also significant for the military innovation that took place at the coastal defense site.
These factors make it of interest to military historians, conspiracy theorists, abandoned buildings enthusiasts, state park explorers, and Stranger Things fans. And all are welcome at the Montauk Library.
Netflix’s series Stranger Things was originally titled Montauk and was planned to be set in Montauk, rather than in fictitious Hawkins, Indiana. The storyline was inspired by the conspiracy theory of The Montauk Project, outlined in Preston B. Nichols’ book of the same name—a book so popular here that it has been stolen from the library multiple times.
Following last week’s release of volume one of the final season of Stranger Things, the library archives saw an uptick in traffic to its digital collections featuring the military base. This collection of photographs taken inside the base by Edwin Crasky in 1980—before the base closed in 1981 and near the end of his 35-year career as the base’s boiler fireman—has been of particular interest to online researchers.
The collection is available to view online on New York Heritage Digital Collections. A history of the Montauk Air Force Station and Edwin’s involvement there is covered in a past Throwback Thursday post.
Riding the wave of recent interest in Camp Hero and The Montauk Project, the Montauk Library’s local history department has digitized and published other materials from the archival collection, including this historical timeline written by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.
For those wishing to dive deeper into the history of the base, its operations, inventions, and adaptation to parklands, the library digitized a few government documents in its collection and uploaded them to the Internet Archive. The reports include photographs, maps, topography, climatic data, historical and cultural resources, chronological site summaries, diagrams, interviews with site-related personnel, and letters.
The archives will continue to add photographic collections and reports as they are scanned. The 1200-plus pages already uploaded should keep you busy until the next volume of Stranger Things is released later this month.
Looking for more evidence of the Camp Hero craze? Stop by the library to see this year’s gingerbread contest winner— an edible rendition of the FPS-35 radar tower. Stranger Things? More like Sweeter Things…
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