Coral Gables Bunker

Operation Mongoose

Known as the Coral Gables bunker, this structure has been a popular hangout since the 1970s, but very few know its history. Some Miami-Dade County documents refer to this structure simply as “the bunker.”

The Coral Gables bunker was built in the early 1960s as part of the Cuban Project, commonly known as Operation Mongoose. This operation was initiated following the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. It involved a widespread campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians and covert operations conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba. The objective was to overthrow the Cuban government by forcing it to implement harsh security measures, thereby diverting valuable resources to protect its citizens from these attacks, eventually leading to a revolution against the Cuban government.

JMWAVE, Miami’s Secret CIA Station

The operation was conducted from JMWAVE, a significant secret CIA station located on the University of Miami campus and former grounds of the Richmond Naval Air Station. JMWAVE became the largest CIA station in the world outside the organization’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It housed between 300 to 400 professional operatives, including around 100 stationed in Cuba, and employed an estimated 15,000 anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Exiles received training in commando tactics, espionage, and seamanship, and the station supported various exile raids on Cuba. The terrorist activities carried out on the island were a major contributing factor to the Soviet decision to place missiles in Cuba, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

During this period, the CIA was one of Miami’s largest employers. The main front company for JMWAVE was “Zenith Technical Enterprises, Inc.” In addition, about 300 to 400 other front companies were created throughout South Florida with an extensive range of safe houses, cover businesses, and other properties. The former Aerojet Dade Rocket Facility site was one such location with a CIA-run carpet manufacturing company operating out of it.

U.S. Cuban Missile Crisis Response

In response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, several Nike-Hercules missile sites were constructed throughout South Florida, such as the now demolished HM-95, HM-40 in Key Largo, and HM-69 in the Everglades, that formed a ring around Miami. These sites were unique in operating an anti-tactical ballistic missile version of the Nike-Hercules, intended to intercept missiles fired from Cuba. A portion of the district’s missiles were armed with nuclear warheads.

According to retired Navy yeoman Anthony Atwood, executive director of the Miami Military Museum, the Coral Gables bunker was most likely an observation center that alerted these missile defense sites to incoming attacks. Following the decommissioning of the Nike-Hercules missile sites in South Florida in 1979, some remained in use by the CIA, mainly used for nuclear disaster response.

The Coral Gables Bunker

In 1968, Miami-Dade County’s first County Archaeologist, Robert (Bob) Carr, was conducting a dig in the area containing remnants of a Tequesta Native American village and burial ground estimated to be more than 2,000 years old. There, he uncovered the bunker, but by then, it had already been stripped of electronics and radio equipment. The bunker was likely not used long, as many radar sites were established throughout South Florida.

A year later, the property was purchased by a subsidiary of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, which planned to develop the site into a golf resort. Local environmentalists petitioned the state to include the land on its new conservation acquisition list, and in 1982, the state purchased the land.

Since the 1970s, the Coral Gables bunker has become a hangout for kids in the area, where they can play paintball, drink, start fires, and do whatever else kids do. Now full of graffiti and mostly flooded, it is no longer the hangout spot it used to be. Plans to develop the land into a park, including biking, hiking trails, and picnic areas, were halted due to a lack of funding.

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