Arlington Heights Nike missile site featured in book

Arlington Heights historians are fascinated by the old Nike missile site east of New Wilke Road and south of Central Road.

Part of the area is now Arlington Lakes Golf Club, but during the Cold War it was the Air Force command center for 22 Nike firing sites in northern Illinois and Indiana, as well as other Nike batteries in Milwaukee and farther north.

The whole system is laid out in the expanded third edition of “Rings of Supersonic Steel: Air Defenses of the United States Army, 1950-1979,” (Hole in the Head Press, $34.95) by Mark L. Morgan and Mark A. Berhow.

The book includes a listing of all the surface-to-air missile sites around the country that protected key population, military and government centers for two decades before modern patriot missiles and other anti-ballistic missile systems.