Burnham Park Promontory Point

This guide to Burnham Park Promontory Point in Chicago starts with a 150-foot steel tower rising from the meadow here in the 1950s, ringed with barbed wire and aimed at the sky. It traces how the U.S. Army fenced off part of Alfred Caldwell's wild lakefront meadow to build a Nike Hercules missile radar site at the height of the Cold War, and the years Hyde Park families spent walking their dogs past that fence instead of swimming or picnicking. Look toward the open grass south of the fieldhouse, where the fence once ran.