DEWLINE Story

 

 

 

 

 

 

     In 1958 the U. S. Department of Defence, under President Dwight Eisenhower, started to build the DEWLINE, or Distant Early Warning Line, 3,000 miles across the North American Arctic region. It was a series of radar and communications stations strung from Alaska to Greenland. A 28 minute video at the National Archives details the construction and operation of the project.
     The DEWLINE project was conceived when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in a "cold war." Both nations were armed with atomic and hydrogen bombs, which were deliverable to distant targets by airplane. The shortest routes for delivery were across the North Pole.
     In the United States, paranoia on the subject of communism and the Soviet Union developed in Congress, state legislatures, churches and industry. Atomic bomb shelters were built in backyards and in basements of houses throughout the USA. Short-range missiles were deployed near potential target areas across the United States, such as the power facilities at Niagara Falls.
     The DEWLINE project was conceived about the same time as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Bell Telephone and its subsidiary Western Electric were lead contractors for the DEWLINE project.
     Click on this National Archives website and then click on the video to see and hear the incredible details of building the DEWLINE. Alternately, click on Wikipedia history of the DEWLINE.