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Debunking the mystery of New Mexican homes with bunkers
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Built in 1951, a house located five minutes away from the University of New Mexico holds a secret. To the untrained eye, the five bedroom, two-bathroom house looks normal, with a small green lawn in the front and large trees with a tire swing swaying gently beneath.
Inside, within a small bedroom closet no larger than a cupboard, lies the staircase to a built-in bomb shelter.
When she bought the house 25 years ago for roughly $450,000, Sandra James had no idea the home had a bomb shelter until after she had signed with the Realtors. While she and her daughter Melissa Mclean at first didn鈥檛 have much interest, Mclean鈥檚 eventual boyfriend Addison Foskey found the bunker fascinating.
鈥淚 love history and stuff like that, so when she mentioned it at dinner one night, I made her drag me down there,鈥� Foskey said. 鈥淲e cleared out the closet and popped that lid off and started exploring the stuff in this little crazy time capsule.鈥�
Surrounded by four feet of reinforced concrete slabs on all sides and topped with a nearly 200-pound steel cover, the bunker has everything a person would need to survive a bombing, Foskey said. The room is complete with plumbing, electricity, drainage, communication systems linking to the whole house, rations that smell of stale bakery food, and air ventilators to pump in fresh air from the outside. Foskey said the food tastes better than expected.
New Mexico is no stranger to nuclear bombs and bomb shelters. In 1945, Los Alamos lab director and nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer detonated an atom bomb 60 miles north of White Sands National Park. Years later, New Mexico would become home to the first public school built fully underground with the intention of withstanding a nuclear fallout 鈥� Abo Elementary School in Artesia.
Foskey learned the history of his own shelter after posting photos on Facebook. One photo went viral, leading Foskey to connect with the original builder鈥檚 鈥� Dr. Thomas Chiffelle 鈥� daughter.
Chiffelle worked at Lovelace Hospital. Lovelace was contracted by the U.S. government to run experiments, and Chiffelle was sent to Nevada, where he witnessed Operation Plumbbob 鈥� a series of 29 nuclear tests from May through October 1957, according to the story told to Foskey.
During Chiffelle鈥檚 time at Plumbbob, he was tasked with testing various bomb shelters by placing animals within the shelter, dropping bombs and analyzing what did and did not survive, according to Foskey.
鈥淭he guy was legitimately worried,鈥� Foskey said. 鈥淗e took the best-performing bomb shelter and basically doubled the specs on everything. You can鈥檛 see something like that and not think, 鈥楾his is something that needs to be addressed,鈥� so he came back and built this shelter in secret.鈥�
Fearful of his potential demise, Chiffelle began secretly building a bomb shelter below his house, claiming to be building a room for his daughter when neighbors got curious, according to Foskey.
The emergency exit is covered by flooring in Foskey鈥檚 son鈥檚 room, meaning the family would have to redo their home to make the bunker completely functional.
鈥淲ithout massive structural changes, it鈥檚 never going to be a place that you can use with anything much more than what鈥檚 in there now,鈥� Foskey said. 鈥淚f it came down to it, despite weapons being much stronger today, we could bunker down there and close the lid.鈥�
Foskey said he and his family do not expect to hunker down in the bomb shelter anytime soon, but they have found uses for the space. They do allow filmmakers to film within the bunker on occasion, and Foskey has considered using the space as an Airbnb for history enthusiasts.
鈥淲e鈥檝e had some people film some scenes down here and did a vampire flick here recently. Santa Fe Fashion Week did a Barbenheimer skit down here and I did a couple of commercials in here,鈥� Foskey said, referring to a 2023 cultural phenomenon that blended the movie premieres of 鈥淏arbie鈥� and 鈥淥ppenheimer.鈥�
鈥淚鈥檝e had a few concepts for some movie ideas or a fun TV show where people drop in here with just a camera, and some people have suggested a recording studio.鈥�
Foskey said there are several homes nearby that contain bomb shelters and, at one point prior to living there, his home connected with the neighbors behind him, hinting at a community based around bomb shelters.
鈥淎t the same period as this house, the people who lived here and the people who lived behind the house had sons that were the same age and they actually built concrete stairs to go from one yard to the next,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey have a shelter over there, so I don鈥檛 think that is a coincidence.鈥�
