History· 9 min read
In 1942, after Japanese landings on Attu and Kiska, the U.S. Army stood up Fort Randall at Cold Bay almost overnight. At its peak the base held 20,000 troops, a hospital, an airfield that would grow into today's 10,180-foot CDB runway, and — in 1945 — the classified Project Hula transfer of 149 warships to the Soviet Navy. Most of it is gone, but the concrete stayed.
01
What survives
Concrete gun emplacements sit above Blueberry Hill and along the outer coast. Quonset hut foundations, fuel-tank rings, and the outlines of streets are visible in the tundra all around town. A handful of collapsed bunkers can still be entered — carefully.
02
A self-guided route
Start at the Cold Bay Airport terminal, which sits on the WWII runway itself. Drive the road north toward Blueberry Hill for a full loop past emplacements and hut pads, then continue toward Grant Point for coastal defense sites. Budget three to four hours with stops.
- ◆Cold Bay Airport (CDB) — the original WWII airstrip
- ◆Blueberry Hill — anti-aircraft emplacements
- ◆Coastal bluffs north of town — gun positions and lookouts
03
Project Hula
Between April and September 1945, U.S. sailors trained roughly 12,000 Soviet sailors at Cold Bay and quietly transferred 149 ships — frigates, minesweepers, landing craft — to prepare the Soviet Union for entry into the Pacific war. It was one of the largest and most secret transfer programs in American military history, and it ran out of this small bay.
04
Respect the site
Fort Randall's remains sit on a mix of borough, refuge, and private land. Do not remove artifacts, do not enter collapsed bunkers, and follow all posted signs. A local guide can add the human stories that concrete alone cannot tell.
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