Seattle Culture
Back Page: Missile Misstep
Bainbridge Island residents fight missile base
By Rob Smith March 15, 2025
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Seattle magazine.
Bainbridge Island residents most definitely did not want a missile base built in their community.
Back in March 1969, Seattle magazine chronicled their fight, even praising them for raising awareness of national and international issues that “far transcend their private missile feud.”
“If the Army goes ahead with its present plans to build a long-range radar system near Seattle,” the magazine noted, “a potential enemy would regard this city as one of the five or six highest-priority targets in the country.”
The magazine went on to say that “the placement some 10 miles from the city of approximately 75 missiles with megaton warheads would make Seattle vulnerable to an accidental explosion that could wipe out the entire area’s population.” Bainbridge Island apparently intrigued the Army because of its location between Seattle and Bremerton.
The determined opposition eventually persuaded the Army to look elsewhere.
As Duane Colt Denfeld chronicled in HistoryLink.org, the Army had previously built a missile base on Bainbridge in the 1950s, but closed it in 1960. The city took over the control and launch areas in 1974, turning both into parks.
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