4 generation family builds container fourplex atop giant missile silo

So this was originally called the Cochise stronghold and it was a strategic place for the government to have a missile silo. What what's out here? So it's one of the original titan missile silos. What was this like when you came when you first came? Just raw land. It's totally raw. And now you've put containers up like it just wasn't enough to have a missile silo buried underground. It's a whole new thing. Yes they're pretty cool. I brought flowers for you and for mom. Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks for letting us come out. Absolutely. We just we're just not done. Because you guys came out from Missouri? Yeah. So it's like a dream to kind of come out to the desert? You know I just bought it for the missile silo. So you came out and it was just like? There was just that hole in the ground. That's the access hatch that we still gotta design something for. Okay and now it's like multi-generational. Yeah now my wife and I we sit there. My mom she works down there. Yeah. My son and his wife in the bottom and then my daughter lives in the top. I have two grandchildren so she's got three bedrooms up there. Wow so it's like a four unit place. Yes ma'am. So each unit is three 40 foot containers. So you've got one unit, two units, three units, four units. Wow. Yeah so it's four houses inside of one house. So when I permitted it I actually had to get two totally separate permits. So this is one permit and that's one permit. So I had to do double on everything. So this is just put together as it would be on a ship? Yeah the four corners is what makes up the load. So that would go together just like that. The only difference is they're welded together hard and fast instead of there would be a twist lock that would go between the two. For the desert out here when you think about how many people it would take to send out here for the framing crew and all that kind of stuff versus we had all the windows and door openings and stuff like that cut in. Containers just show up and we crane them in place. So you kept it like container like you didn't kind of hide anything? Yeah well what's funny budget wise right is containers can be used very cost effectively but it's all tied to design. So the minute you start doing all the ornate stuff the cost effectiveness goes out the windows. So we put them together the way God intended them to go together right like legos. As long as you're doing that it keeps the bulk of the cost down but once you start like turning them and where you see more ornate stuff then that starts getting more costly. And then plus with the silo being here and it just made sense to keep it the way it looks. Because it feels like kind of military right the color too yeah camo. Yeah we wanted the tan to blend in. Right it's the color of the dirt so everything's. That's what yeah actually Mike and I even went out to the road and parked and would look at it and I mean every step of this was like tailor fitted. And then putting four units together was that an issue? I barely got in they didn't want to let us do it but I begged and pleaded and checked the boxes. So I just had to go more in depth on the drawings to prove to them that you know this can carry that load and we can weld a ledger onto the side and come out with these 12 inch beams and that all this stuff will work. So all these this whole corrugated wall this this is essentially like the webbing on a truss. Basically where we remove it more material needs to be added somewhere else. So when we when we remove a section of the of the wall like this we introduce structural members that will telegraph the load between the top and bottom plate. And so we're just transferring or telegraphing the load to new structural points. Did your family keep growing as you or the people who wanted to live with you kept growing as you? You always knew you want to have multi-generational homes. We like being together. Yeah but that's an unusual thing to find it's not easy to find something that works for like several units together. That's the 40 feet between them and everybody has their own personal space. Okay a lot of good light you don't feel like you're in a container at all. No. You guys live in a traditional home right? Yeah. Would you say you live in a tree house because it's made of lumber? So in the same sense there's actually no such thing as a container home. But you can feel where they and there's three across is that what we see? Yeah exactly so this would be the seam here. So because we removed so much wall this big honking beam had to get put in and then these lollipoles go in to support it even more because although before it gets put in you'd look at that beam and go wow that's real rigid and big structural piece of steel right? But it's so long that they're like a guitar string they actually don't you know they will flex. So we have these rigidizers where they're needed. So there's some here there's these two here that I just couldn't do anything with but make them how they are you know tied them into the island and stuff so they're the least amount in the way but then there's two more hidden in these walls. So we we hid them there and then these guys just kind of live here but what I try to do is instead of run from stuff like that I try to make it a feature so like now they can you know clip stuff to it make you know chairs or put a hammock up there whatever they want to do. I mean this is the bedroom. Wow you don't need that much space it feels big enough doesn't it? Like my closet you know it's perfect Mike's stuff up here mine's down here so I can reach it and then the bathroom is awesome too. Just tiled a bit of the container really I mean yeah the top units have the hot water units for both so we have the water heater for us and grandma washers downstairs and we hang out the clothes. So your mom's downstairs or is your mom? Mike's mom. She's been living with us for a while when we told her about this she was really excited but she didn't realize that we were talking about her living down there she was like oh you're building me a house too and it was like she was just overwhelmed. How many generations living with you? We have three so far well four when my grandkids come for the summer yeah we have four generations here. Like in the old times? Yes a lot of other countries do that. So do they come knocking very often? Oh yeah we get we're all over it's everybody's checking on grandma everybody's checking on everybody else everybody's seeing like Alex if Jamie's fixing something you know Alex will ask if we want you know what she's making or I'll holler that I'm making something or we'll take stuff done to grandma's. Because right across here are the kids. That's my our daughter Savannah and then when our oldest boys girls come they stay over there as well. The idea was to make it feel separate when you want it to but feel together when you want it to you know so everybody can go to their own units but they can also just open up a door and have a function. So how many houses? Four houses. Four houses each one roughly? A thousand square feet. And then we have the common area all the decks. We wanted our living space to be outdoors not indoors. We make real good use of magnets. 800 pound magnet. That'll support me? That's just that's not bolted? Yeah. This you used more container to do the porch? No that's called b-decking. Okay. The views up here. When we first came out here we spent I don't know how long looking for a house. There's a silo that was important at first. Yeah we see all that debris the metal the concrete yeah that's what we dug out of there to be able to get in there. Are you ready? So when you came out you couldn't even see the silo it was buried? Yes everything was buried. The military came in they were the first ones when the site closed the military guys that came in they took all the top secret stuff out. Oh that looks beautiful looks like you tied a knot. When the last guy left and then it would have been turned over to civilian contractors and then they filled it full of concrete and took off. We have landing. This is the detritus of missile base 571-1 tiny 2. This is most of all the stairwells that were down in the access portal. So this would have been the decks and the stairs that went down. Most of this stuff looks like part of the access portal roof. This is part of the missile silo door. Here's the boxes that we filled up and we just pull these you know in and out in and out. We're actually there's only about three feet of material left. Oh my gosh a bunch of dirt's falling down into something. Did you see that? You see that dirt falling down underneath the bucket? We got lucky and I'm assuming this was one of the last ones they did because they did not do everything that they were supposed to do to keep people out. Yes we've touched the floor. Oh we can see you. That access portal was probably about a third full of concrete. Like they were supposed to fill places with concrete. They got lazy. They figured nobody's gonna go down here. So we really got lucky and they were fairly lazy by the time they got to our side and left a lot of really cool stuff and did a lot less damage. Here's the hole. Look at there's the door. In case you can't read it says Cochise Stronghold. I've not found the welds yet. I might have saw one. Oh yeah right here. Crazy tiny. I can deal with that. We'll be able to grind that off. All right guys here we go. We've been looking for years looking at missile silos different places all up north and in Kansas and up North Dakota, Wyoming. There's a couple in Missouri communications places but I always liked the desert you know because we drove out we just never lived out here and I'd like the idea of it and Sandra said she didn't mind it so it was a done deal then. When you look down here you have to be willing and able to climb up that ladder. Oh wow it's yeah it's down. You can imagine so this wasn't here and the lift wasn't here. Yeah so what's left of the steps you would kind of spider ran down and then you jump on the ladder and climb down and we did that for months. Oh see this would have been a concrete room you wouldn't be able to see down there the concrete wall here there was a concrete roof it was a flat door that laid there and you would have walked downstairs into a hallway and then you would have called here and this was a steel security door and they would have unlocked this and then here was a deck and then you'd go downstairs so and it's a legit thing if you don't think you can climb up that ladder then don't go down. Okay okay you're good there we go okay okay okay I just if I don't look down I'm fine. So when this was full it was full of dirt huge chunks of concrete that the government dropped it which collapsed these stairs there were metal stairs under here collapsed all this and went to the bottom and then they filled it with dirt rebar and all that metal there's crazy how much stuff and this used to be really clean when we opened it up because we we got down here and then we cleaned it before we ever went into it so I was up there with a hose trying to get that dirt off and underneath that there was a piece of concrete and I tried for like 20 minutes from here to get it off and finally I was like no forget it and now it'll be there forever because it was the last piece that the government left down the only left of their destruction so I'm going to leave that little rock there they wanted to destroy it they wanted to block it so no one could ever yeah they wanted nobody to ever get in here but pretty good concrete guys and when we first opened it up the door you know it looked so much better but you know oxygen getting to it you know but each one has its own tag ours was kochi stronghold is it locked no no just pull we were going to let you do it so you could open a 6,000 pound door and pull hard because it's 6,000 but not bad that's not that bad yeah yeah precision right imagine the guys down here trying to build it I mean how do they get this big honking thing down the facility was built around the doors so they excavated down 40 feet and then the first thing they put in were these doors and then all the other structure was built around the doors and these are hermetically sealed when you close these doors because they're tied these are the largest nuclear weapons ever built and this was the last of them so and this these are hardened sites no other missile silos were meant to take close nuclear attack these were built to withstand the 12 megatons at a mile miles it's not that far away and this place was built to withstand that to withstand that yeah sorry huge thick wall huge thick doors the doors on titan twos are completely different than any other missile what is the weight of just this thing is 6,000 pounds three tons thicker than a snicker it's a lack of heart yeah we've got electricity down here our own yeah the doors are this was built around the doors and then that door goes to the actual silo so this you started to uncover well this was all after we got the door opened this was all open so we've taken stuff out and you know we've brought lights and stuff in but it was when we opened the door it was like this it was preserved yeah now that is what we have to dig through to get to the the silo so this would be another door another 6,000 pound door and then the actual silo would be out that way so you have to mine it's a mining operation yeah well this was all dirt we come in and take buckets out and just carry buckets out at a time and just doing it slow now since we're more focused on the house we've been just doing this slowly yeah we haven't been working on the house for well it's over here now we haven't done much down here i'm going to see on the wall where the contractors that were tearing it up there's lots of graffiti in here some from contractors some from when the military was here some from when the military did their part in shutting it down it's kind of cool and trying to save it all so this if you keep digging you'll get to the silo 120 feet is that way exactly is the silo and you know that because of the floor plan is always the same for each silo yeah these titan 2 sites are placed every 10 miles each one was different we got the best one though truly this is a this is the alternate command center so this is the one that would have ran all of them they would assume that in a nuclear event this is the one had extra communications and stuff so they would run the other sites if something happened which if you look at the other sites they're not all defendable but this place isn't very defendable wow and so you were just digging yeah just we're just piddling with this right now yeah i'm just kind of taking dirt out because we've got nothing better to do but eventually we'll dig it out from the outside go down expose that again see it used to be covered in steel but they went into it a couple years before we bought it so they this is the way they came in and they didn't replace that steel so when they filled it back in it just the dirt came in so you could use this for housing we do come here i'll show you well kind of there's still more it's amazing though so you came down here it had been buried for years and this was all open and you opened it up and it was like this it was preserved yep it was even better because really most of it was brand new all this paint peeling that you've seen it was not peeled none of it was after we opened it the moisture so we put in the dehumidifier downstairs and took all that humidity out and then the paint just started to do you know what this was then this was the actual command center where you'd push the button launch control center it's like straight out of star trek yeah doesn't it here's where the the button or the one is but yeah this was the duty board and you can still see that's original back before we started the house we always had somebody here on the place and in the summer that was the deal when we came out here we had a fifth wheel and it had heat and air but you got to be able so i said no air conditioning so the whole time we never had air so in the summer before you know building the house we would come down here we'd watch videos and play video games we'd hang out because we didn't have any shade you didn't want to hang out in the fifth wheel with no air so in summertime when it gets really hot this has got to stay yeah what it is what it is right now never changes the temperature doesn't change yeah it takes a long time for the temperature to change a long time yeah because of all this earth and all this concrete yeah so now you take this hammock and string it across yeah we've actually got three hammocks we've got a bunch of hammocks that we string over here um we moved it all out of the way and we watch tv play video games we set chairs over here so you really use it yeah oh yeah you're actually standing on a structure that is is hanging see these suspended by these springs you notice all three levels are suspended by springs and that was for one to all the energy that would be released when you launched the missile which rattled this place cramming but also nuclear bomb falling close by would also rattle it so and apparently that shock wave traveling through the earth with a solid object couldn't break bones and kill you so they made it so it would absorb that that energy and then there's also the upstairs where the crew would sleep and eat and crews would be here for what 48 hour shifts that's 24 hour 24 hour where's the lights well let me you gotta plug them in that's the other thing you electrified this we brought power down yeah we brought power down here this entire facility was fed to what's called the umbilical so there's eight inlets down on level third level down there so we exposed them up top they had some wire in and then we re-ran electrical through that we're gonna redo it this is not quite what we want but everywhere on level two which is the launch control center part is all all the outlets work it's pretty impressive that you come down this far with everything yeah before for months we didn't have that elevator we just parkoured down yeah you just kind of parkour down and you know we had the excavator that we'd pick stuff up with but and we had no electricity so we'd come down here with flashlights once you lit it up and change it completely it was like oh wow this is cool this is where they would sleep these were covered in tile because this was really hot in this facility they had this giant air conditioner but it was still hot because it's so much electronics that were ran down here so this room was completely covered in asbestos tile when we got in and not only that they had spares like boxes and boxes just in case we didn't have enough so that's what pulling all these tiles off and we got rid of those so this is the bunk room yeah this is where they slept do you have it set up uh two bunk beds on the wall i'm gonna say the pictures i've seen is yeah they were up along the wall going this way it's just where the signatures are underneath no that's over here yeah we got really cool graffiti the men and women that were stationed here you get you know some teenagers and young 20 somethings together and you're gonna see something somewhere it speaks of a moment in time yeah you gotta this was right at the cold war it was the height of the cold war and you had 18 to 24 year olds living down here spinning every day you know you did a really serious job you could end the world we've probably had i'll bet pushing 50 people that were in the military that have showed up here and and we've brought them down and that's how we've learned about the code that's in there that's written among the graffiti how they would talk to one another without without words it's really interesting so we're leaving all that and then yeah it speaks of a really cool moment in time i like that smoking in bed which is weird because you can smoke everywhere else you couldn't smoke near the missile or down there but they like were the launch control center like you could smoke at work you could smoke all you just couldn't smoke in bed that was the only place this place was really wet so when we got in we had there was condensation on the ceiling there's carpet in here and it was literally wet to the touch all the rust that you see is pretty much happened from the time they went in until now i think this place would have been beautiful had they never came in had we been the actual first to come in this was the kitchen yep kitchen there was a table here and all that interesting graffiti which i'm sure you won't want to film and you get dirty if you look at it but it is really cool it extends from over there to back over here like at a school desk we've actually had two of the guys who appear on their back in here there's one guy who's written about the most and it's really interesting because some of the dudes that we brought down here knew him and they understood why his name appeared so many times and so the kitchen actually looks like a pretty conventional kitchen there was a fridge there stove here table there this area back here was a there was a desk there this is where you'd write letters or do your reports and stuff back in here yeah here's the labels there lime away floor wax hand soap paper towels to see this all preserved it's just a slice of time just got preserved really and we got lucky there were two missile silos for sale when we got here one of them was open but where you came down that access portal was probably about a third full of concrete and they'd had to to jackhammer down to the door and actually when they filled it they had left the door partially open so the concrete flowed past the door into that first blast lock area yeah and this is just all this is personal space it's everybody comes down there so they really didn't use it that much you come down there somebody would cook but but they said they really didn't sleep that much anyway you're just here for 24 hours there's always stuff to do so they take naps so they did sleep or no they're working the whole well they they were talking to mike about how it's just 24 hours they would have stuff to do they might nap and take little breaks but they didn't use this area as much as you know i think one would think right you're thinking you'd eat yeah but you remember when you were 18 well no i think they did eat i mean they definitely used the kitchen but and again these are just stories that we've got from the people that have come down here is this your same type of exactly yeah be that king yeah it made sense for them it probably made sense to exactly it's a it's a scalable common commonly used building component like c channel which that's why we did the shipping container home none of these sites ever launched any titans any rockets but vandenberg where spacex launches from they did so they still vandenberg still needed parts so they took all the usable stuff to vandenberg and then they turned it over to civilian contractors this is when the military officially left 21 november of 1983 funny to have history preserved like this isn't it right like this hasn't really been touched we were so pleased when we got down here and realized how much stuff that they'd left because early on the civilians would come down here and they'd be excited about all the steel down there so i know people that they cut some of the structure apart and other sites but this one they'd got their fill they just wanted to get out of here so they didn't take a lot that was good for us you ready for me to kill it yeah you can see right here where it attaches it's literally just springs so the entire three levels is supported by these oh there you go it's almost like a pneumatic system yep yeah when you launch the titans were the same rockets that our space program used that's what got us to the mirror you know that's that's what took us out of orbit and they used them the those rockets up until the 90s i think is when they used the last of them so this was by far the biggest rocket ever launched as far as i know certainly the biggest nuclear missile and it's only getting lost what that'd be 140 feet away from you and you've got two 6 000 pound doors between you but that's still a lot of energy and again these were actually hardened sites so they were built to withstand a close-up nuclear attack so that during that you'd want this place not fixed it's that transference of energy i think if you get down here and i could get a bunch of us you could push against the walls and maybe get the whole structure moving i have ideas about getting a motor rotating motor and have an offset counterweight and center it and see if you get this whole maybe have an earthquake effect down here if you get this whole thing moving as you see that it's not a connector to the walls and it's sitting on springs yeah and is it completely round yeah very stanley krueger clicking on that and down here just see that the floor is kind of gone yeah everywhere there's a hole there was something that sat above it like there's a sub-level there's a stool down there it's not tall enough to stand in there's more of these cabinets underneath there it's fun to explore it's fun you just don't know what you're gonna find the escape hatch is right over there can i walk over yeah you can walk everywhere there's a hole right here and right there everywhere else is safe oh yeah so behind that they filled it up with concrete so we got to finish jackhammering through there and then it's also welded we know it's welded right under here because we've been to other sites and that's typically what they do but it's welded on the inside so this is where they would have left from like everything would have been done when the last guy left he left out here and then as soon as they got done they filled it full of concrete and took off they would use that daily but they and that maybe it wasn't the very last but they welded on the inside which made me think it was the last place this is all communications equipment a big bunch of his communications because this was an alternate command center they had more communication stuff this is actually a server rack right this is plug and play it's interesting that those nuclear days look almost like you know technology wise now we are just like going with ai and crypto and those things require facilities that in a way are similar to these ones and a faraday cage you know you don't want your electronic data being erased and it can't be erased in here because this whole structure is a fair game cage when you turn everything off you can hear the blood run through your vein you turn you won't hear anything turn off the lights and do that for five minutes it's a lot of square footage though i mean you really have a lot of space to play with it oh yeah brought the grandkids down here they love it you know the kids love it talk about a huge fort i mean yeah exactly yeah so three or four hammocks and we point them towards the tv and we just watch tv it's nice actually because you have something that's kind of darker cooler go underground and then you have the up top which is so light and views and air so you have like summer and winter homes if you want that yeah yeah that's the tree this is the roots not everybody's gonna buy a missile saddle it is cool but are you really gonna kind of spend the time and the money to do something with this probably probably not a lot of people well it's a big toy we just wanted a home though there's a home and it's gonna be here for so many more generations and this door is off the hinges no that closes yeah all of them close so when somebody would come on duty they would have to go through security measures to be able to get down here at the first gate there was like a telephone you'd have to pass that yeah there's like eight of them so that first door gets you into the stairs the second phone gets you down the stairs and then right outside this door was another phone and that got you in here or into this room you see all the doors were closed at all times so they were so cold closed and sealed all three of these or four so you'd call on that phone that would have been out there they would open that door and you come in here you close that one that one to lock you come in here now here's the interesting thing and here's the phone the only complete phone that's still intact all the rest are broken and then they get you into this one and then there's another phone and they'd open the next door and and eventually you get in but this is really cool so there's these things right here that unscrew and they go all the way through the door now if you read this sign what that says is if you get stuck in here when they're switching crews if they were on alert or something so they might get stuck in here for a couple hours so what this says is basically you got yeah absolutely the interesting thing is that they're four-man crews but there's only three holes for military man you want to close the door yes i'd love to six thousand pounds there oh wow it's not that difficult no wow look at that so those pistons used to go laterally then kochi stronghold refers to do you know who kochi says he's the only indian that never surrendered we actually signed a treaty and it's because we look at where they live kochi stronghold was where they lived and it was defendable the military could not get past it they eventually had to make a deal with him they literally could not conquer him in his stronghold it's just like this you see that bluff looking thing out there that's the actual kochi stronghold the apache lived up there port huachuca is over there so kochi's he lived in the valley and they would just watch and they could see when the army would cross so they could just wait for the days to get here and then they would just move just a little bit up the hill into those rocks and they could not be defeated they had to ultimately sign a treaty kochi's buried up there someplace there's no apaches that live there now so they got moved but he never surrendered and that's i think why they because this is a very defendable position as a missile silo nobody's going to sneak up on you so neighbors none this is all trust land between the highway the railroad the end of the mesa and the mountains government land they lease it so they run cattle out here but the good thing is no neighbors ever initially there are probably eight to twelve concrete boxes with a manhole and so underneath here is where either communications would come in like a junction box somewhere electrical this was just down in the hole this is the biggest thing we pulled out of the access portal we thought it was one solid piece of concrete but it was the last thing remaining you can see we dug down to it and then it dawned on me when as he was describing it that it was a manhole so i thought it's one of the electrical boxes and she knows that's exactly what it was um so it's hollow it's like hey luke man can we put this in the middle this would make a cool wine cellar root cellar this is the box you're telling about that box was sitting over there and it's the size of our cars almost so communications line would have come together in this box so if they needed to work on them they could climb down this manhole and work on whatever was there and we just had a box that was sitting over there and you know a good root cellar and that kind of thing another cool thing is these cool rocks by the foundation points government rock it was government they brought this in and they used this for like their parking lot so there was just a whole bunch of this rock over there and so we just utilized it to me that makes it really special because it's utilizing just like the box utilizing the old world for the new one of the big benefits to using containers in general we kept the vibe of doing everything in steel because we don't want to have to repair anything ever you know regular degular house in the in the burbs it's pretty expensive you got to replace the roof and the fascia boards rot off and all that kind of stuff you know repairs and maintenance could add up pretty quick but you don't have any of that if you just do a tiny little bit of paint maintenance these buildings will outlive me by a long time i don't know how you got it were you hanging on it swinging on it that's crazy school children been ringing this bell for years you don't try and turn it upside down just make it ring everybody knew there was a missile spot right here but they are all 10 miles apart from each other from here to tucson what was the reasoning i don't know maybe easy getting to they wanted it to look like there was nothing out here nobody forgets people hung out here even though they couldn't get in this was you could tell this was a it was a hangout spot and i've had many people tell you yeah we used to come out here and drink with these kids but the government tried to make it look like there wasn't they did a good job but they buried everything there's so much underground you you can't turn a shovel out here without coming up with something so peaceful out here man i'm so glad you guys are moved in and chilling out i want to do this myself if you go back back when we homesteaded stuff you know families came together and they lived long time and great granddad planted the apple tree that the grandkids are eating on and i i think it's just unusual now this is how people lived