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An abandoned US military radar base in Lefkada

Eglouvi, Lefkada island / Ionian sea

By Desolation Road

June 16^th, 2020

Standing on a ridge of the highest mountain of Lefkada island and next to an eerie old sand mine, on a deserted area where the winds are usually howling and the fog is laying low, an abandoned United States military radar base is a vivid reminder of the Cold War era.

Built in 1965, it consisted of the radars station and the nearby fully equipped military camp and was used for the communication between various NATO bases of the Mediterranean. The station had four huge radars and a power station with four generators. About 30 Americans and 15 local Greeks were working there.

The erection and the function of the radar base were met with skepticism, denouncements and objections by large parts of the Greek society that were opposing the existence of American bases on the country’s soil. There were even conspiracy theories about the occurrence of nuclear weapons hidden inside the base.

The base shut down early in the 1990s, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which signaled typically the end of the Cold War. Overlooking the roads to the central Karya village and the plateau of Englouvi, it was passed to hands of the Greek state and since then it lays abandoned and looted.

An abandoned US military radar base in Lefkada

Footnotes

Text & photography Copyright: Panos Diamantis 2017

FootNotes

Text & photography Copyright: Panos Diamantis 2017

© 2026 Desolation Road

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