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Jamesburg Earth Station sale: ‘Great place for armageddon’

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Interested in owning your very own nuclear bomb-proof earth station, a massive satellite dish and a piece of American space history?

As we told you earlier, the Jamesburg Earth Station, which transmitted some of the first images of the Apollo 11 moon landing, is on the market.

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The one-of-a-kind securely fenced 160-acre property comes with a three-bedroom house, a 20,000-square-foot building, a helicopter landing pad and a 10-story satellite dish and antenna. It’s in Cachaua Valley, not far from Carmel Valley and about 20 miles southeast of Monterey.

I spoke with Jeffrey Bullis, CEO of Absolute Turnkey Services Inc., who has owned the Jamesburg Earth Station for seven years.

He says he bought the property next door to his friend Jack Galante who runs a family vineyard. Bullis and his son Adam cleaned up the decommissioned satellite communications station and planted fruit trees and had some cattle.

Bullis paid $1.7 million for the property and then poured another $2 million into it. Then Adam, just 23, died of leukemia.

“It really knocked the wind out of me,” Bullis said. “He was the one who really liked the property.”

After grieving for a few years, Bullis said he put the Jamesburg Earth Station on the market. But so far, no takers.

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“It makes a great place for armageddon,” Bullis said. Sheltered from the winds and operating its own self-contained air system, it could survive a biological or nuclear attack, perfect for a survivalist or Ted Nugent, Bullis said.

“It’s an above-ground bunker,” he said. “The building is so strong that you couldn’t knock it over with a 5 megaton nuclear blast. And you could defend it strategically with a small platoon of Marines.”

For the tamer of heart without a military contingent at the ready, the picturesque property in rolling hills could be turned into a winery or olive orchard, he said.

Bullis is a Santa Clara entrepreneur who runs a 30-employee electronic assembly business, a holdout among manufacturing companies increasingly moving offshore. One of his current projects: Building a security system for nuclear sites around the United States.

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