We drove through heading to the dells wednesday. Dam that place is huge. What do they do or did do there. Would love to walk and snoop around inside the gates.

RangerT

Badger prodiced Rocket fuel, double base cannon powder, and small arms ammo.
Built on 7,354 acres in 1942.  Put on standby in 1998. and still maintained in "standby".

The plant has issues with ground water contamination, and I understand people want it demo'd and sold off.

I say fire the place back up and start making ammo.

I also would like to take a walk around there.

I heard its been sold off and theres the developer is waiting on decontamination to start. Thats just what I heard.

Either way I wouldnt wanna get caught "wandering" around the place if its still government controlled.

Actually, they're well into the process of dismantling the place.  Instead of returning it to the heirs of the people they kicked off in the 1940's, they are (or were) arguing over who gets how much of the land.

Lots of groundwater contamination issues.  Place is an environmental disaster.

Last actual production was during the Vietnam war, when they made 20mm shells (and maybe more, I'm not sure).  Boy, would I love to have one day's run of 5.56mm  

my old Military unit got to do a few weeks of training on site. it was pretty cool and I learned a lot I did not know.
Driving around the place in Humvee's  was cool, lots of roads...
The building designs were cool for the time.
Steam heat (No flame/No electric spark) was generated into the buildings by miles of pipes.

Every building had slides on the second floor for fast evacuation in the event of an explosion.

Building spacing and the size in general was part of the design to prevent chain reactions of one building touching off another.

A lot of buildings had lights on the outside of the building s that were designed to shine into the buildings (Spark/Fire prevention).

I believe Olin (Part of Winchester) has the Gov Contract to maintain parts of the complex.

The ground and top soil is so contaminated with bad shit like mercury ,etc, that we were not allowed to fire crew served weapon's blanks unless we laid down a ground tarp first. The fear was hot brass could ignite the soil (Not cool)

We did a few drill weekends there and the immense size of the place really stuck with me. Pretty Impressive and I can say I got to see a lot of the place most people don't get to see...

My mother and father were both working there when they met. They both tell some cool stories about the place. My mom's favorite is how she used to cut up dynamite and boil it for testing purposes.

I got to work on the fire system at the fire station one time (very old technology). Lots of cool stuff sitting in some of those buildings.

The wife used to work for a hazmat remediation company who was bidding for the cleanup job.

Lots of crap in the ground.

its a neat place.  my old unit used to go there and train.  when you start driving around it has a real ghost town feel to it.  kinda creepy sometimes late at night if you were doing black out driving practice.  if i remember correctly its kept on the books in a stand by condition so they have more time to clean it up.

We went on a tour of the place like ten years ago.  It was open for one day only, and you went on a school bus with guide through the property.  The line was huge!!  You weren't allowed to get off the bus anywhere.  

Would have been cool to see it when it was in full operation.  They talked about how the everything was designed to be steam/air powered to reduce the possibility of an explosion.  As a kid I always remembered seeing all the pipes when we drove by, they were the steam pipes to run the place.  Cool stuff.

What a great place for a shooting range.  Maybe we could get the property cheap!  Already contaminated with lead and everything else.  I still don't understand how they got a four lane road in front of the place, when money could be better spent elsewhere on roads in the state.

A guy  work with is in a wheelchair and according to him they allow handicapped people to hunt in there. He says that there are supposedly some pretty huge bucks running around on that property. I haven't ever heard this from anyone else though, so I'm not sure if that's true.

Wonder if any of the bucks in there have three sets of antlers?

Quoted: A guy  work with is in a wheelchair and according to him they allow handicapped people to hunt in there. He says that there are supposedly some pretty huge bucks running around on that property. I haven't ever heard this from anyone else though, so I'm not sure if that's true. Wonder if any of the bucks in there have three sets of antlers?

Driving by there you can usually see a ton of deer hanging around the place and yes there are some monsters in there. I am not sure I would want to eat any that came out of there due to the amount of heavy metals in the soil but to each their own.

i've seen some good size deer on post and more turkeys than you would know what to do with.

Im from Baraboo and have been around the plant alot... My grandma worked there and I have relatives that are still working there cleaning up the mess.

Its the largest plant outside of russia ever built and on a huge slab of some of the most solid and oldest rocks on the planet so there would be no chance of tunneling under there,, rumor has it there a tunnel system and have talked to people in the army corps of engineers who mentioned the bunkers but havent seen them.

Everyone needs to look at the map of the CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) area, its easy to see the area is directly downstream from the plant. If it can kill trees it must be in the plants those deer eat and alot of the toxins cause the same problems..
There used to be signs that said they will shoot if you cross the fence but we used to snoop alot right on the outsides of em. My advice is stay upstream of that place!

not sure if you still can, but I used to bowhunt deer on that place.  you would just write for an app. to hunt then they let you roam free in the nonrestricted areas.  very cool place lots of deer and large bucks.  several times it was like hunting in a ghost town, when deer were around the buildings.