David Allan Rueter

Construction 129, a massive concrete structure built into a hilltop 800 feet above the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, is a coastal artillery battery that was never completed. In 1943, just after the 2 gigantic 1,000,000 pound cannons it was designed to house arrived at the site, the military declared it obsolete and halted construction. By 1950, all of the nation’s 30 similar coastal artillery batteries were shuttered. Their military role was nothing other than symbolic: not one ever fired on an enemy.

The National Parks Service has preserved much of the original emplacement as a historic site, and today visitors may explore the ruins. Monumental earthwork, severe concrete architecture, dark tunnels, and extensive labyrinths evoke the grandeur and mystery of ancient Egypt, Greece, or Rome, tinged with the dull pathos one might find examining the weathered remains of a neighbor’s ill-fated deck construction project. The privilege of access to a formerly secret and restricted area imbues a subtle uneasiness, as if the guards (or their ghosts) might unexpectedly return. On clear days, a commanding view lures tourists and birdwatchers, who outnumber the occasional photographers and history buffs. In the fog, it is vacant; the distant hum of passing ships is barely audible in the strong wind.