The three men who died in the Apollo 1 fire on 27 January 1967 were neighbors in the small towns along Clear Lake. Ed White lived in El Lago, next door to Neil Armstrong. Gus Grissom lived a short way across Taylor Lake in Timber Cove. Roger Chaffee's family lived in a one-story ranch house in Nassau Bay. When the news came, friends and family filled the Chaffee house to keep reporters away. El Lago grew up with the space center. Started in the 1950s and incorporated in 1961, it had about 750 residents by 1967 and grew as space center workers moved in. Armstrong and White bought three lots there together, divided them, and built houses side by side, finished in 1964; they lived next to each other for years. Jay Barbree's biography of Armstrong tells how White ran barefoot with a garden hose to his neighbor's house one night when it caught fire.
The suburbs around the center were full of astronauts. Buzz Aldrin lived in Nassau Bay, and Gerry Griffin, later an Apollo flight director, moved there in 1964. During missions, as the families later remembered, the press flooded the front lawns.
El Lago today is a town of about 3,000 on NASA Parkway between Taylor Lake and Clear Lake, and the astronauts' former houses are private homes.
Getting there
29.5722, -95.0440
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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