PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Today, all that’s left of Kelly Butte is a stretch of tagged concrete, but the fear the bunker once tried to protect against may be coming back around amid tensions with North Korea.
Kelly Butte was once America’s largest shelter and was designed to be a temporary city headquarters in case of a disaster.
“If it was wiped out or it was gonna be wiped out, they could move everything there,” Jeff Felker, a local expert on the shelter, tells KOIN 6 News.
But a storm in the 1960’s proved the bunker wasn’t very useful.
“It was like a dungeon, there was no windows, the air ventilation was horrible,” Felker says.
It was later turned into a 911 center and then eventually taken over by transients.
The city finally decided to board it up, making it nothing but a piece of history.
