Aroostook’s former Air Force base is a tourism hub despite little marketing

LIMESTONE, Maine — As redevelopment efforts at the former Loring Air Force Base gain new ground, a volunteer group wants to work with Loring leaders to keep up the momentum they’ve built around tourism.

Loring Air Force Base closed in 1994 and since then most of the redevelopment has been geared toward industry and businesses. The base’s closure caused a population exodus for Limestone and surrounding communities, leading the Loring Development Authority to prioritize job creation and ventures that could turn the base into a modern industrial and entrepreneurial center .

With little public marketing beyond Aroostook, tourism has become its own mechanism for growth at Loring. Since volunteers opened Loring Air Museum in 2005, they have drawn in thousands of former military personnel and others fascinated with the base’s most historic sites and ties to the Cold War.

If that growth continues, it could dovetail with new businesses at Loring, which will include a new potato chip plant , a sustainable aviation fuel facility and potential aerospace opportunities , and boost tourism in Aroostook overall. Last year, the region saw the state’s highest spike in visitors — a 17.5-percent jump between December 2022 and November 2023.

Last year, more than 3,000 people signed in at the museum and 300 students went on tours, said Steve Dobson, who serves on the boards of Aroostook County Tourism and the Maine Tourism Association. That does not capture everyone who visited, but it shows that there is opportunity for growth, he said.

“There are a lot of people in their 40s, 50s or 60s who lived through that Cold War era of hiding under their school desks [during nuclear attack drills] who want to see the [bomb storage] bunkers and the [airplane] hangars,” Dobson said.

And that was in between Loring Air Museum’s biennial open houses, which draw in thousands more people than any individual summer season, said Cuppy Johndro, volunteer secretary for the museum.

Roughly 4,000 people attended the first open house in 2009, but the latest in 2022 drew an estimated 9,000 to 10,000 people who reunited with Air Force colleagues and viewed a B-52 airplane fly-in. Air Museum volunteers already expect at least 10,000 attendees for their next open house Aug. 2 to 4 .

Those events are opportunities to showcase iconic Loring landmarks, like the 75-year-old “arch hangar,” and weapons storage area where Air Force personnel assembled, stored and repaired nuclear bombs.

Tourism at Loring has broadened beyond the museum thanks to volunteers’ efforts to save the arch hangar , which was built from 1947 to 1949 using 12 individual concrete sections to form the arched roof. Located near the former Loring runway, the hangar attracts thousands of tourists a year, including at least 5,000 snowmobilers, according to data from Aroostook County Tourism.

This year, museum directors and Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, proposed a bill that would have transferred ownership of the vacant, decaying hangar from the Loring Development Authority to the museum.

That bill failed , but the renewed attention has increased visitor interest. Johndro and other volunteers have given tours to at least 1,000 people since May alone.

New leaders at Loring Development Authority, a state-funded public municipal corporation that owns most of the 3,800-acre Loring Commerce Center, have taken notice and want to save the hangar. The authority is submitting a plan to the Federal Aviation Administration that could redesignate the airfield as a public airport.

That would allow for commercial aviation business as well as qualify the authority for restoration grants aimed at the arch hangar and other property. Interim CEO Jonathan Judkins said that he wants to explore ways that the authority and the museum could fundraise to get matching funds required for any arch hangar grants.

The hangar might also get help from the federal government. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Caribou native, announced Friday that she has requested $2 million in congressionally directed spending to go toward renovations. The Senate still needs to vote on the appropriations package that would include the hangar in fiscal year 2025.

It would be foolish for the authority to not invest with tourism alongside economic development, Judkins said. When solar eclipse activities were held at the arch hangar April 8, more than 2,000 people attended.

“Moving forward, we want to take a proactive approach [to tourism] and partner with the Air Museum,” Judkins said.

There is also growing interest in Loring’s former weapons storage area, nicknamed the “North River Depot.” From 1952 until the 1980s, the depot contained over 80 bunkers that stored nuclear bombs that would have targeted the former Soviet Union had they threatened or attacked the eastern United States during the Cold War.

Around the perimeter, three above and underground fences, one of which was electric, kept out potential intruders. Only people working at the depot could get in, and only after passing through the main gate and a revolving gate, then slipping their credentials through a mail slot to armed guards posted inside the security station.

“I grew up in the shadow of this base and I had no idea that all of this [in the Depot] even existed,” said Matt Cole, Loring Air Museum’s vice president. “Even people who worked at other parts of Loring didn’t know.”

Starting in 1998, the Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge took down dilapidated buildings that weren’t deemed historic and got rid of the electric fencing to restore the depot as a natural grassland and wooded area.

The Wildlife Refuge’s auto tour route opened to the public in 2018. On the tour, guests can view the remaining bunkers and other buildings like the “mine shop,” formerly a repair space for nuclear bombs, and the famous “A-Building,” which resembles an office building but stored plutonium, the radioactive metal that made Loring’s weapons atomic.

In 2022, 3,344 vehicles used the auto tour route, according to a tracking device placed at the Wildlife Refuge’s entry gate that year, which was down for repairs in 2023. Data is not yet available for total 2024 visits, and the Wildlife Refuge did not start recording visitors until 2022.

The Depot area is so popular already that folks will need to grab a seat on an 88-passenger bus that will give one guided tour on Aug. 4, the final day of Loring Air Museum’s next open house.

The tour bus is a response to increased demand: In 2022, 100 cars followed a smaller bus that carried passengers during the last open house tour of the Depot. It’s yet another reason why Cole and others see the potential to grow tourism at Loring.

“We’re the pinnacle of tourism in Aroostook County,” Cole said. “I think there’s a way we can coincide with economic development [at Loring]. We bring people here to see what’s going on.”