For sale in Utah: "die-hard survivalist bunker"

There's no price listed on the "Kayenta Bunker" for sale in Utah, but the property taxes are just $430 a year.

Highlights:

"There are hidden caves which I will show to the new owner. These caves have not likely seen any humans besides myself and my boys."
"Plenty of hunting; there are deer, rabbit, and quail on our property every day."
"Step outside the front door and you can fire a pistol, throw knives, strip naked, whatever!"

No mention of what the giant tower is. Anyone know? And is it on the roof or is it behind the above-ground "bunker?"

Kayenta Bunker (Via Lovely Listing)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Felton

Looks like something from Fallout 3.
Anonymous

–Microwave relay tower. Those are old fashioned microwave antennas. Probably behind the building which probably housed the necessary equipment for operation. At a guess, the current seller bought the place when the former operator of the tower didn’t need it anymore.
wylkyn

It won’t protect you from the graboids.
- Anonymous
  
  Awesome comment–you sure Michael Gross isn’t selling this place?
- Anonymous
  
  It will also not protect you from John Stockton. Is it really that surprising that these survivalists live 10 feet away from super high amounts of radiation. the
Anonymous

Deer, rabbit, quail, graboids…
- Anonymous
  
  graboids…you guys are damn funny.
Broadwing

It’s an old AT&T microwave relay tower. The bidders and owner might be annoyed to know that this isn’t a ‘bunker’, it’s one of the least protected types of microwave site that AT&T had. The antennas don’t have the blast protection kit on them, so it wasn’t designed to take even a 2 PSI blast wave. Love those old sites, though!
Anonymous

Tower with microwave “elephant ears” was part of the “long line system” wholly paid for by US tax dollars and wholly owned by Ma Bell. My father built them all over the US when he was in the Army.

They’ve all been decommissioned, with various excuses, but really so that the incumbent telcos will no longer have to provide equal access to competitors.
eccentriffic

What is wrong with Utah? Bad drivers, calcium-infested water, Mormons, dry state = hard to find alcohol, the whole mind warp that involves nuclear dumping in the state, despite efforts to keep parks pristine and to preserve nature.

Other than that, it’s beautiful from the North to the South. The people are usually friendly, plus you have great places to ski. Oh, and Sundance Film Festival in Park City.
nanuq

Considering it’s existence and location are now public knowledge, doesn’t that cancel out any advantage it might have had during an actual emergency?
techdeviant

It seems weird to me that you would outfit your survivalist bunker with $5K worth of heating & AC.
- Anonymous
  
  Wanting to survive doesn’t automatically mean wanting to survive in privation.
  
  And damn do I wish I had the means and wherewithal to own this place.
  I’d love to excavate a real bunker. That’d be exciting.
- dculberson
  
  And Ikea cabinets.
JT Montreal

That tower and those contraptions look like plain old microwave antennas. My guess it that building used to be just a telecom relay station, housing nothing more than a backup generator and a few racks of receivers and transmitting amplifiers to forward telephone calls to the next relay. The building (plus equiupment) probably got obsoleted when the long distance operator put down fiberoptics, though the interior probably got stripped. I guess you can buy those places for a song, then turn it into your personal bunker…
MoreBeer

It’s likely an old AT&T microwave relay station. A lot of them have been up for sale recently. Check out http://www.long-lines.net for a lot of cool history on these classic telco communication networks. These sites are hardened for post-war communications, and protected against EMPs.
Ralph Giles

Those are microwave transmission horns used for telecommunications. Relaying data traffic where there’s line of sight but no buried cable, for example.

Probably it was originally built as a telephone relay station to bring service to remote communities and obsoleted by later road development.
legionabstract

The tower probably broadcasts the number sequence from Lost.

I guess part of the appeal of being a survivalist is that you get to have cool hideouts like this. I bet they’ve got a ping-pong table in there.
Anonymous

1. You do not want to have your “die-hard survivalist bunker” photographs on the internet.

2. It’s not really a “die-hard survivalist bunker”.

3. Property advertised as such are usually crazy overpriced.
toxonix

Thats a microwave transmitting station. It’d be kinda lonely out there. But quiet! That would be awesome.
benher

Survivalist? I dunno… I looked at the photo pretty hard but I don’t see a red Cadillac with a trunk full of guns and a steer skull on the hood…
Anonymous

Bunker and hunker…hmmmm….kinda rhymes…aye? Popular word with current negative media…..Hiding in plane sight works better…..
ill lich

On one hand, pretty cool. On the other hand, so lonely and isolated. How many miles to the nearest town, and what exactly is that town like?

What’s the point in surviving if you survive in your own personal prison?
TheCrawNotTheCraw

“you can fire a pistol, throw knives, strip naked,”

I’ve always *wanted* to do all three, simultaneously…

But do I *have* to live in Utah?
- Anonymous
  
  You read my mind brother Ha ha
- kc0bbq
  
  What’s wrong with Utah, other than the people who live there? This is far enough away from them to not have Mormons knocking on the door to proslytize.
  
  Utah can be really beautiful. And who’s going to bother a naked guy tossing knives around and shooting his six-shooters in the air?
- Anonymous
  
  No. Of course you don’t “have” to live in Utah.
  In fact, I’d rather you not move here.
  Too many “damn” Californicators anyway as it is.
  - big sunburned grin-
Anonymous

It’s part of the old ATT LongLines System. They are all over the US most on East Cost went to American Tower.
Anonymous

Santa Clara (what AT&T called it) is one of the smaller AT&T sites. It has an upper and a lower (underground) floor, walls that are thick concrete (some sites had copper in the walls for EMP supression), and it used to (at least) have a concrete outhouse. It’s also right next to a FAA microwave site, at the crest of a hill, on a rocky road, off old US-91. I doubt there’s much water, even if you drill for it; this part of Utah is at the edge of the Mojave desert, and the site is flanked by Joshua trees. This site never had people at it, it’s a tiny building, and your only neighbors would be wildlife. It will have (or did have) 3-phase power.
The tower is adjacent to the building, not on top of it, and is a 150 footer, I think.
I think you’d have to be nuts to live there, but it would have a nice view.
Anonymous

pricing: they said they paid 110k for the bunker and then there are add-ons.
steelerfan1

is it still available for sale
marksgelter

This is in Diamond Valley, just north of St. George and on the fringes of Dixie National Forest and Snow Canyon State Park. A very lovely area.

TheCrawNotTheCraw – Sheesh, get over yourself.
- crnk
  
  marksgelter–are you sure this is in Diamond Valley? The title noted Kayenta, but that confuses me since it is in N AZ. I think Diamond Valley areas seem too close to small towns, plus he mentioned BLM, not forest service.
  
  for the person asking the nearest town: assuming this is somewhat near Kayenta, that would be the biggest town, with about 5k residents. However, there are little towns of 50-500 that might be closer, like Mexican Hat or Bluff in UT. Page, AZ and Moab, UT are medium sized cities and Farmington, NM or Flagstaff, AZ are your biggest nearby cities at about 50k; each of those 4 cities are probably within 3 hours.
JimmerSD

The tower is an old microwave relay tower used in telecom. The horns are microwave cones.
Todd Knarr

#12: if it’s near Kayenta, it’s up north-east of Flagstaff a long ways in the Four Corners region. Hit Google Maps and look for Kayenta, AZ, that’s probably the area. I’ve been through there, it’s flat and deserted and the towns in that area tend to be a couple of buildings around a crossroads and if you’re driving and blink you can miss them entirely.
Anonymous

I saw this site on E-bay several weeks ago and it was listed for $99,000
Anonymous

These typically go for $10-15k, no way he paid 110k, just bs marketing for idiots without knowledge. No offense guys.
MadMolecule

That whole site is pretty awesome. I love this listing:

…this 5 Bedroom, 4.5 Bathroom Antebellum Estate leaves nothing out. A fully updated 1890 Mansion on 86 beautiful rolling acres…

Heh. “Antebellum” and “1890.”
- kc0bbq
  
  People don’t actually care what words mean. They hear a word they don’t know and just assume it means ‘old’. They do the same thing with the word ‘vintage’, as well. ‘Vintage’ clothing. What vintage?
  
  I get sad when I see the language get watered down not because of real evolution, but merely because people are idiots trying to sound smart.
Anonymous

One giant sandworm and it will all come tumbling down…
- Anonymous
  
  That was FUNNY!
UncaScrooge

They’re selling it now? Apocalypse has never been more nigh than now!! They’ll be sorry when they’re squabbling in rags over irradiated cans of Campbell’s Soup.
- Brainspore
  
  They’re selling it now? Apocalypse has never been more nigh than now!
  
  True, but that will be the case no matter when they sell it (unless they sell after the Apocalypse, in which case they’ll have to be paid in human femurs or whatever the dominant currency of the day happens to be).
Bill Albertson

It has water, if you are willing to drill for it, and plenty of water storage. They are already growing a garden there (how useful or big is another story), but it sounds like they worked out the issues with that place already, and the tower is a big bonus for HAM operators and wireless network geeks. The interior looks well done… too bad my wife would NEVER go for it :)
Robert

Wait. If he’s selling his bunker, he can’t be such a die-hard survivalist. Unless he’s trading up to a more spacious bunker in a better area. But you know, the recession really did a number on bunker prices…
Teller

Utahsome! Especially southern, northern, the east and west. Plus, everyday Mormons are nice people.
- mr_subjunctive
  
  Plus, everyday Mormons are nice people.
  
  If you’re heterosexual, anyway.
  - Teller
    
    You’re right. Don’t visit Utah.
Anonymous

Doesn’t anybody read the posts that were left before they leave a post? How many people does it take to tell someone the tower is a microwave tower and why would anyone want to climb a tower to cook a tv dinner?
Anonymous

“It won’t protect you from the graboids.”

Dang… you beat me to it.
cm

Found, using the above link:

Santa Clara Utah. For those with extra time on your hands, you can even follow what towers this one connected to:

http://www.drgibson.com/towers/santaclara.html
lmptlw

found it!!!

http://www.porticus.org/bell/images/scan0003.jpg

pic from 1968

it says:
“This is a pix of the Hollister, MO Radio Relay Building & Tower taken in about 1968. I was the supervisor at this location between 1966-1968. The location is just south of Branson, MO and still in use today although used for digital radio not analog radio relay. A half dozen technicians worked out of this location maintaining smaller microwave relay stations along the St. Louis-Dallas Radio Relay Route.” – Roy Juch.
http://www.porticus.org/bell/longlines.html

pic is about 1/3 way down
- Anonymous
  
  You’re a genius!
hobomike

“Step outside the front door and you can fire a pistol, throw knives, strip naked, whatever!”

So what. I can do that and I live in Los Angeles.
- Anonymous
  
  You must be the type that comes up to Hesperia / Victorville area to party .lol
dotytron

My partners and I own three of these old AT&T sites in Indiana and Illinois.

They are nice sturdy structures I’ll tell you that! We lease space on the towers to cell phone companies, public safety organizations, and wireless internet companies. These old sites are great to work on and it’s unbelievable how well these old towers have held up…after more than half a century there isn’t any rust on these things. None.

A few summers ago, when scrap prices were high, we ripped off all the microwave horns and copper feedlines and sold the material for scrap. That was a fun job let me tell you! But we got the sites for cheap and the money we got for scrap paid for the site plus a little profit. All we have in them now is a little sweat equity.

All of our sites are the 300ft models of towers as the topography here is low but hilly, requiring the taller sites. This site looks like it is a short tower probably located at high elevation. There is a site almost exactly like this one near McCarren airport in Las Vegas that has been repurposed as a cell site.
- MoreBeer
  
  @dotytron, I’d like some more info on the towers you guys own… Could you DM @MoreBeer on twitter? thx!
weatherman

I’m a little concerned that the only water source is “the state”. Aside from the ethical dilemma of getting water for free while opposing government interference, I would think that a source of water would be critical in a post apocalyptic retreat, as would some place to plant some roughage. Nothing is worse that being constipated while besieged by a motorcycle gang of cannibalistic skinheads.
Anonymous

Definitely one of the most basic sites. Ours is a little more solidified and complex.

http://www.usshc.com
vinegartom

Oh, and here’s something else we all missed from Utah recently: http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/13325
Anonymous

GRABOIDS! THATS IT! GRABOIDS!
Anonymous

The tower behind the hut are, what we used to call, AT&T Horn (microwave) antennas. My guess this was an old AT&T microwave rely hut.
ultranaut

What do people do all day out there by themselves? I always wonder this whenever the road takes me to more out of the way places… who are these people living all alone out here? Or even stranger, in tiny little towns. What is it like to live in an isolated town of 20 people in 21st century America?
Anonymous

Why would you want a Survivalist Bunker in the same place where the Mormons massacred passing wagon trains about 150 years ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

Seeing as 120+ hardy pioneers were completely massacred here by locals here in the lawless west, you don’t think you’d get massacred here again in some lawless future?

GLHF (good luck have fun) !!!
Anonymous

If the nuclear or zombie holocaust arrives, goodness don’t step outside, naked or not!
Anonymous

The Kayenta they are referring to is not the Arizona one. This Kayenta is a residential development west of Ivins, Utah near St. George. The bunker is WSW of Ivins on Old (US) Highway 91 near Utah Hill (south-west corner of Utah) near the Shivwits indian reservation.
Anonymous

One for sale in Ocilla Ga. 200K
Anonymous

That looks like Burt’s bunker from Tremors:
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010570/
Anonymous

Those towers are indeed microwave towers. They’re still there as a backup for when the satellites go down. then they go active. there still gigabytes of info going thru them at all times just to keep them working.

I retired from A phone company that had them going from LA to Reno thru Bishop, ca.
- Anonymous
  
  Uh, no there is not giga bits of info going through there. Late, digital microwave radio systems carry 3 DS-3s or an OC-3 (155.52M bits) per radio channel and usually have 7 working channels per 6 GHz or 11 GHz system. MCI’s long-haul microwave network was primarily dual 4 and 6 GHz with the 4 GHz system employing 22 working channels with 2 DS3s per channel and the 6 GHz as previously described. The last AT&T site I visited had been equipped with dual 4 and 6 GHz systems as well as a lower frequency band. All of it was decommissioned due to the vastly greater capacity, reliability and economy of fiber optic systems.
- Anonymous
  
  Oh, I forgot to mention that satellites have much less capacity than fiber optic systems and cost much more! I currently work in satellite communications and we are dual-fed with two OC-12s on fiber and microwave radio.
JoshP

++ on the old telecom lore, — on the survalismo. That place is gold. All the hard work has been done. Two plus years into my homestead and I’m still peeing into a bucket. We won’t talk about what happens when a stray cornchip lands in urine around dogs… sigh…
The seller sounds a little.. eccentric. But if it has the acreage and the view? Wow, nice little place to ride out the zombie apocalypse. It’d be interesting if your team had some people good with hydroponics or low water usage plants that were more useful as food than brain candy.
Anonymous

That tower is a pretty sweet sniper spot to shoot zombies.
Anonymous

If anything really bad happens, don’t run to a bunker. Go to a church.

I’m an atheist but that’s what I’d do!

Why? Because nobody ever goes there anymore. They don’t call them sanctuaries for nothing…
iijoanna

Kayenta Bunker – Kayenta, Arizona near the Utah border? — Monument Valley, Utah would be closest to Kayenta. I doubt that you can walk outside naked in that area … …
Anonymous

hopefully it has a wall full of guns so when the giant worms come crashing through you can unload your arsenal on em…
Anonymous

@What do people do all day out there by themselves?

– apparently fire pistols, throw knives, and strip naked
guvnor

Poor Burt Gummer. First the Graboids destroy his rec room, then the Ass-Blasters get into his MRE’s, and now this!
Anonymous

I drive past this place about once a month on my way from St. George, Utah to Mesquite, Nevada. It has been for sale for quite a while now. Any thoughts you have of this being “the middle of nowhere” are a little misplaced, though. Highway 91 doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but there is probably a car a minute running along it during the day. And it’s only 20 or so minutes in either direction to get to a fairly large city (20000+ pop).

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=saint+george,+utah&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.505383,68.466797&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=St+George,+Washington,+Utah&ll=37.10169,-113.823917&spn=0.008985,0.016716&t=h&z=16
Anonymous

Imagine how awesome his other one is if he is selling this one.
dolo54

Ahh Utah. Such a funny state, you have your teetotalling mormons next to your wild eyed survivalists. I remember stopping for gas and buying a banana and a bottle of water which was like a $1.50. The guy working the cash register (probably the owner) snorts when I put them on the counter. He then says “I’ll never understand why someone would pay good money for water, you can go 5 miles down that road and get water for free out of the creek.” I said to him “I’ll gladly pay $1.50 not to go 10 miles out of my way.” I actually got him to crack a smile at that.
Anonymous

Iam going to buy it so if the zombie,nuclear, or robot apoclypse happens i can live to tell the tale!
Dan

Living there would make my Jeep happy.
Anonymous

Is this it?

http://maps.google.com/maps?sll=39.647997,-111.533203&sspn=8.034205,10.931396&ie=UTF8&ll=37.101459,-113.824722&spn=0.004065,0.005338&t=h&z=18
i_prefer_yeti

Hey! You! Kid! Stay off my gravel!
avoision

If I’ve learned anything from that “Walking Dead” instruction manual you guys always post about… it’s that places like this are gold.