The Role of Women at Marin Headlands Coastal Defense Sites

The Marin Headlands is characterized by a network of forts, gun batteries, barracks, and military buildings spanning various eras. Given its location at the mouth of the Golden Gate, the Headlands offered a prime vantage point for coastal defense installations, from the earliest military constructions during the Endicott Era (1865-1898), to the missile bases of the Cold War years (1950-1974). The preserved history at these sites offers windows into the past, where we can learn about the motivations that compelled the policies and actions of the United States from the time it became an imperial power during the Spanish American War, through World War 2, and into the Cold War; eras that have lasting impacts on our society today. We can also gain insight into the personal lives of the soldiers who worked here, and what freedom, safety, and protection meant to them.

Women were not always able to play a prominent role at these sites due to societal restrictions that largely barred their participation through these eras. That being said, here we highlight two women who contributed to the lasting stories and legacies of two coastal defense sites within the Marin Headlands: Battery Townsley and Nike Missile Site SF-88.

Soldiers loading one of the 16-inch diameter guns at Battery Townsley. Thanks to La Verne Bradley, we have a better understanding of what it was like to live and work at the site.

GGNRA Archives

National Geographic Reporter La Verne Bradley

Battery Townsley was built in 1938, but wasn’t staffed around-the-clock until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This casemated Coast Artillery battery represented the zenith of military technology for U.S. coastal defense at the time. The two 16-inch guns and their associated ammunition magazines, power rooms, and crew quarters were protected by up to 40 feet of concrete and earth to shield them from aerial bombardment and naval gunfire.

In the spring of 1943, National Geographic magazine carried a story by journalist La Verne Bradley about San Francisco during wartime. As part of her research, Ms. Bradley was escorted on a secretive nighttime tour of the Harbor Defenses. Although she never discloses the names or locations of the installations she visited, it’s pretty clear from her description that she traveled to Marin and toured Battery Townsley. See the following excerpt for a scene that perfectly encapsulates the experience of visiting the battery at night:

At a given point the driver snapped off the headlights, and we began to wind over miles of dark, silent hills. It was like a spy film. Or like spiraling slowly down the black insides of a gun barrel. Not a movement, not a sound in all those vast reaches of gloom. A light would flicker for a second away off, then go out. Suddenly, from out of the blackness a voice would ring out: “Halt! Who’s there? . . . Advance and be recognized!”

Soldiers at Battery Townsley also reacted to her presence. See in the following excerpts:

We crawled through damp 3-foot-square tunnels revetted and lined with burlap. I was handed a phone and told to report that “All was secure.” Way off I heard an amused, “Very good, sir—a— ma’am!”

Back in the underground city, we explored more channels and more quarters. Soldiers would look up and smile as we walked over the concrete floors. An officer glanced at my heels and said, “That’s a sound we don’t often hear around here."

Today, we emulate Bradley’s spirit for adventure and passion for storytelling by giving tours of Battery Townsley on Open House Days. She was a skilled writer, and we have her to thank for a story that humanizes the experience of working at Battery Townsley. If you have the opportunity to tour Battery Townsley for yourself, we encourage you to adopt La Verne Bradley’s keen attention to detail and think of how you would tell the story of your visit.

Excerpted from: “San Francisco: Gibraltar of the West Coast” by La Verne Bradley, National Geographic Magazine, March 1943, pages 279-308.

Lt. Susan P. Cheney (right) converses with Ranger John Martini (left) in the Nike Site’s missile magazine. 

GGNRA Park Archives

Lt. Susan P. Cheney

The Nike Missile Site SF-88, located in the Marin Headlands, served as San Francisco’s last line of defense during the Cold War. The site operated around the clock to maintain nuclear anti-aircraft missiles that could be fired within a five minute’s notice. The site was characterized by a certain level of alertness – missileers had to be ready for the unexpected, and the dawn of World War 3, at any moment.

Susan P. Cheney was the first female Air Defense Artillery (ADA) officer to train at Fort Bliss, Texas and to serve at the line unit level. Fort Bliss, Texas was generally where every person in the Nike Program received their training. She arrived at Nike Site SF-88 in 1974 to serve as its last battery executive officer – two years before service academies like West Point would admit women for the first time. She saw the Nike Site through its closure, as the Nike program was deemed obsolescent when ICBMs began to rise to prominence. From there, she went on to navigate a successful career, even though there was not a clearly defined role for women in the military and it was difficult to rise to leadership positions. For example, when Army leadership decided to prohibit women from serving in the Air Defense Artillery even though she had already held a leadership position at Nike, Cheney was forced to transferred to the Ordnance Corps and served with ADA units only as a support officer. The Army then reversed its decision on women in 1978, and Cheney was able to resume the leadership positions she held before. She became a colonel in 1991.

When asked to describe what would happen if a missile was launched at a Nike site, Cheney responded:

“By the time we launched everything, you were going to be gone. All what we were going to do was slow them down. Life expectancy, and that is one of the things I have thought for many years, when they talk about women in combat, and I laugh because Air Defense is safe in combat. Our life expectancy when we were lieutenants, and I still remember this, sitting in the Nike-Hercules class, we were told our life expectancy was five minutes from the time the balloon went up to the time that it was time to do it. We were told that every Air Defense site worldwide that we were their number one target. Command and control and us.”

The Nike Missile Sites were all that stood between life as we know it, and a completely new society and landscape that would be altered by mutually assured destruction. Cheney was a pioneer for women in the military, even though she encountered obstacles regarding the role of women in military leadership. In light of Cheney being the first to do something, we ask you: When have you accomplished something for the first time? Perhaps you were the first in the your family or your community, or you succeeded in achieving a personal first. Regardless of your answer, we can look to women like La Verne Bradley and Colonel Susan Cheney for inspiration as forerunners that set a precedent for all those who followed.

Excerpted from: Martini, J.A. and S. A. Haller. 2010. The Last Missile Site: An Operational and Physical History of Nike Site SF-88, Fort Barry, California. Hole in the Head Press.