field. Initially, there were no roads, which had to be built as part of the construction effort to reach the top camp. The radar site (top camp) was sited on the summit of a 1,600 foot mountain located 2 miles south-southeast of bottom camp. It was reached via an access road built along the side of a mountain, about 4 miles in length. Radars were installed at the top camp in October 1952. Radars at top camp included an AN/FPS-3, AN/FPS-20A and an AN/FPS-93A. On 8 December 1952, the 711th AC&W Squadron was activated to replace the National Guardsmen and the station went operational. As a surveillance station, Cape Lisburne provided information 24/7 to the Air Defense Direction Center at Murphy Dome AFS near Fairbanks, where it was analyzed to determine range, direction altitude speed and whether or not aircraft were friendly or hostile. Communications were initially provided by a high frequency radio system which proved unreliable because of atmospheric disturbances. The Alaskan Air Command, after investigating various options, decided to build the White Alice Communications System, a system of Air Force-owned tropospheric scatter and microwave radio relay sites operated by the Air Force Communications Service (AFCS). The Cape Lisburne site was activated in 1957. It was inactivated in 1979, and replaced by an Alascom owned and operated satellite earth terminal as part of an Air Force plan to divest itself of the obsolete White Alice Communications System and transfer the responsibility to a commercial firm. In 1955 Cape Lisburne became part of the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line), the most westernmost station on the line which stretched east across the northern part of Alaska, Canada and into Greenland. The station received an AN/FPS-19 pulse radar and was designated as station LIZ-1. It remained a manned station on the line until DEW Operationc ceased in 1983 when the station became an AN/FPS-117 Minimally Attended Radar station and is now part of the NORAD North Warning System (NWS). Over the years, the equipment at the station was upgraded or modified to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the information gathered by the radars. In 1983, Cape Lisburne AFS received a new AN/FPS-117 minimally attended radar under Alaskan Air Command's SEEK IGLOO program . It was designed to transmit aircraft tracking data via satellite to the Alaskan NORAD Regional Operations Control Center (ROCC) at Elmendorf AFB. No longer needed, the 711th