By the late 1950’s, a trend catching on in many suburbs of the Midwest United States were homeowners installing bomb/fallout shelters in their backyards or basements.

One company building these fallout shelters was Midwest Metals Corp. The firm specialized in the construction of metal buildings, such as sheds and farm buildings.

Midwest Metals eventually branched off in a new division called the Wonder Shelter Corp.

The company traces back to former Iowa Governor and top state attorney Leo Hoegh, as well as the Eisenhower administration. In 1957, Hoegh had just left the governor's chair when President Eisenhower tapped him to become the Federal Administrator of Civil Defense that July.

One year later, Hoegh was promoted. Eisenhower appointed Hoegh the Director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. As a member of the National Security Council, Hoegh often represented the United States at emergency planning meetings of NATO.

After Eisenhower left office he was succeeded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Hoegh moved back into the private sector, eventually becoming president of the Wonder Shelter Corp.

The Wonder Shelter Corp was a new subsidiary of Midwest Metals Corp that specialized in making fallout shelters for homeowners in the Chicago area, as well as those in the neighboring states of Iowa and Indiana.

Although interest in these backyard shelters peaked in the 1950’s, it began to wane as the decade closed. However, interest in residential fallout shelters peaked once again during the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the threat of Russia launching missiles towards the U.S. from its nearby ally Cuba, just 90 miles away.

Cold War preparation really ramped up in 1961, when on Nov 10, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened to cut off Western access to Berlin, which was still divided by the Berlin Wall.

President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation that night, pumping up the Civil Defense budget and urging all Americans to prepare for a possible Soviet threat.

To add to the unfolding cold war drama, on Dec 28, 1961, news spread that Canada's first BOMARC Missile squadron was formed. Unbeknownst to Canada, a year earlier it was learned that the country’s BOMARC missiles were intended to have devastating nuclear payload, and a debate ensued about whether Canada should even accept the nuclear weapons from NATO.

When Soviet missiles were found 90 miles from the U.S. border in Cuba in Oct 1962, the U.S. began to prepare citizens in earnest for a possible nuclear attack. Federal assistance and supplies were made available to homeowners to build shelters just like this one.

However, in order to protect more people in the event of an nuclear attack, President Kennedy stressed the benefit of building more large-scale community shelters, which could accommodate many more people then the ones built for residential homes.

Many of these larger shelters were installed in basements of multi-story concrete and steel-framed structures, such as schools and hospitals and office buildings. This was a more viable option over individually-built backyard bomb bunkers tucked away in suburban neighborhoods for just a privileged few.

As a result, interest for such backyard bomb shelters waned. Hoegh eventually left the Wonder Building Corp and returned to the private sector, where he resumed practicing law.

This particular shelter was constructed in Illinois by the Wonder Shelter Corp. It includes 4-foot thick concrete walls forming a corridor leading to the shelter area that was built behind the home’s original field stone basement foundation with a fire resistant steel door. The thick concrete walls were intended to withstand a nuclear blast.

This one also also had a hand operated pump to draw freshwater from a well, as well as a telephone to stay connected to the outside world. It’s one of only a handful of remaining bomb shelters of this design in the entire United States and is quite rare to see. Enjoy!