1970's aerial views of station construction

This Navy photo gives an excellent view of the construction progress near the end of the 1972-73 season, with most of the power plant and garage arches completed. A berm has been built up for, well, the berm. What I find of real interest here is the second berm visible 350' northwest of the end of the garage arch. This was the site of the arch for "Building 7," a self- contained emergency camp building, with emergency power and water facilities etc. For some reason this structure was never built--two of its ATCO modules were used to build the Annex (I stumbled upon one of the other modules, heavily damaged, on the hill in McMurdo after our winter) and the arch may have been used for a garage facility at the old station...(?) Part of this picture (right) appeared in the Antarctic Journal in March 1975. The original was taken by PHC J.G. Barna, dated 1 Feb 73. It possibly was taken as part of the survey of the 917 accident. My copy came from Bob Nyden; the caption on the back says, "Facilities at New South Pole Station, Antarctica. Showing berm storage area, two wonder arch buildings and the completed geodesic dome."

Here is another aerial photo taken about a year later, near the end of the 1973-74 season. This one is from the NOAA library. Still one more year to go before dedication, but the place is getting close to being done. This shot shows the entire site including the construction camp. The fan-shaped excavation in the lower right is the snow field for the melter in the camp head/galley. For a really good view, check out the full-sized image from NOAA. Notice the remains of the berm for "Building 7."

There is a large black and white copy of this image on station...for a number of years until 2006 it was in the pool room; more recently it has been reframed and has a rather prominent location in the main B3 hallway entrance to comms and the offices.

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