Drive 21 miles south of the Golden Gate Bridge and you’ll pass the coastal town of Pacifica and end up at a place known as Devil’s Bunker, located in the Devil’s Slide area. If you look right towards the ocean, you’ll notice a large, graffiti covered bunker appearing to almost hover over the ground thanks to a small pile of rocky earth beneath it.
While it’s not a Parks On The Air reference, it is part of the USBOTA (United States Bunkers On The Air) program. The US joined the growing list of Bunkers On The Air countries earlier this year.
Devil’s Bunker was a coastal defense station built in the early 1940s and closed in 1949. This hillside outpost was part of a triangulation system (coordinating with soldiers at other bunkers) who would assist a coastal artillery battery to precisely strike any enemy ships that attempted to approach the California coast. There was never an attack and newer technology replaced the need for these outposts.
The Devil’s Bunker outpost has an eagle eye view of the Pacific Ocean.
Like other military coastal bunkers on both ends of the Golden Gate Bridge, it now sits empty and exposed to the elements, no glass windows, no doors and some with no roof. I climbed up a steep slope to reach one of the rooms.
It was steep and challenging to get up to this room.
Disappointment greeted me. I had expected an opening to other parts of the bunker, instead it was a small room covered in graffiti. It was apparently under concrete stairs going by the slope of the ceiling. Besides the spray paint the only signs people had been there were the empty bottles left behind.
I was met with disappointment, a small dead-end room and bottles from previous visitors.
Whatever the bunker was like during it’s operational years was far different from what it had become. Over the years the bunker had rock and soil beneath it removed which gave it its precarious look.
Ground removal by man and erosion gives the bunker a precarious appearance — seems nature refuses to let this bunker slide away.
It had been covered inside and out with a colorful variety of graffiti on its once cold, grey walls.
Over 75 years since closing it appears every inch of the bunker is covered graffiti.
For some, Devil’s Bunker has been a place of lazy, wasted days, a place of refuge, a place friends, sat, drank, smoked and reminisced. For others it’s been a another photo op where influencers share their latest moment online.
Friends laughing and making new memories.
This bunker has seen many people with many lives come through here. It’s seen soldiers, rockabillies, beatniks, dropouts, burnouts, hippies, hipsters and some of the young hopefuls wanting to be the next tech Disruptor in Silicon Valley.
For some, Devil’s Bunker is their last stop, some with broken dreams, broken hearts, and some simply broken people. Some take a long gaze out to the ocean before turning their backs to the sea and leaving California.
One last look…
Walking around the bunker I wondered which room had the radio that sent Morse code at night to soldiers in other bunkers. There’s a tale that if you stand outside the bunker at night, look at the stars and the wind blows just right you might hear faint dits and dahs. Is it a ghostly signal sent by a long gone bunker soldier similar to the many stories of haunted, decommissioned naval ships? Maybe it’s just hopeful nostalgia by a ham imagining what it was like at this beach outpost so long ago.
