Hidden among the stunning hills off of Paradise Valley, Montana is the state's largest bunker community. Current resident Dean Anderson fell in love with the area after visiting for a fishing trip and went on to buy an abandoned 1980s nuclear fallout shelter. With the help of young men struggling with life for various reasons, Dean converted the three-storey underground shelter into a unique space.
Click or scroll on to meet the man who built his own bunker home and watch the incredible transformation unfold...
In Paradise, Montana there are more than 50 underground bunkers dotted across the breathtaking landscape. Back in the 1980s, when the Cold War still rumbled on, local homeowners in the area were required to have a place in a fallout shelter, hence the high numbers. According to Dean, “it was actually in the home owners association's (HOA) documents.”
Just 25 miles from the northern perimeter of Yellowstone National Park, Dean discovered Paradise in 2018 and set about looking for a property of his own. Unfortunately, he found that house prices were "in the stratosphere" – luckily, all was not lost...
Dean eventually stumbled upon this bunker, which was up for sale by the owner for "next to nothing". Five years later, documentary maker Kirsten Dirksen visited Paradise to capture the property's transformation from a forgotten bunker into an awesome underground home.
This is what the site looked like when Dean first bought it. You can make out the dome beneath a mound of earth, a chicken coop, a chimney, two 1,000-gallon water tanks and some of the 120 food-storage barrels Dean found strewn throughout the property.
Usually found in Atlanta, Georgia, Dean has been in recovery from addiction for over thirty years. He now creates interesting and unusual construction opportunities for young men in early recovery, giving them the tools for change. Dean even documents their adventures for his own reality show, The Montana Society, which is filming its fourth season in summer of 2024. The series can be streamed via the Most High Media app.
Here, Dean and his team can be seen digging down to expose the concrete bunker below...
The group eventually fully uncovered what Dean describes as a "4,500 to 5,000-square-foot cement igloo" made from "a million to a million and a half dollars worth of cement stuck underground". According to Dean, the structure was so sturdy as the original builders "over-built the poop out of it" using excessive reinforcements and materials to ensure their safety in a nuclear disaster.
Despite its rough and ready appearance, Dean was convinced he could "turn it into something cool".
What had once been the entrance into the main bunker, the previous owners had turned into a kitchen and living room – as you can see from this rather grainy old photo.
You can see a wood-burning stove, with its flue reaching all the way up to the concrete ceiling, which was about 13 inches thick.
As we can see, Dean and his team updated the room and made openings into two well-proportioned bedrooms.
This area had originally housed a decontamination chamber. During decontamination, the contaminated water would have run underground, into a 3,000-gallon septic tank below the kitchen.
When Dean started work on the property, the tank had been turned into an area to store emergency food rations. The tunnel that lead down into it was hidden inside a kitchen cupboard and was large enough for a man to fit through, as one of Dean's crew-members demonstrates here.
The enormous bunker was filled with unexpected discoveries. In fact, the team sourced so many random items, they coined the phrase, "the bunker will provide".
They sawed through the kitchen floor to reveal another old septic tank. Dean cut it open and converted it into what he calls a "redneck geothermal" storage tank. The temperature in the tank stays at about 12°C (around 54°F), so Dean pulls cool air from it in the summer and adds cool air to it in the winter to help keep the bunker home at a consistent temperature all year round.
This unfinished bedroom currently sleeps one person, however, when the bunker was originally built, it contained bunks to sleep 12 to 14 people. Dean now aims to create three individual bedrooms using the walls already in place.
"The bunks went all the way up [to the ceiling]. It's amazing how they had them crammed in here," Dean says. "If your children were smaller you got a discount."
In the corridor, Dean proudly displays a collage of his friends and protégés working with him on the bunker transformation. It centres around an image of an old police mugshot of Dean, back in the days when – in his words – he was "young and dumb".
The mugshot shows Dean "screaming at the policeman". He explains that, a long time ago, he was "going nowhere" and his future looked bleak. Then an old man took Dean under his wing and said he could give Dean a set of tools and show him a path whereby he could straighten up his life. As a result, Dean has been sober for over three decades.
"Now, I'm really just paying it forwards," he says of his mission.
"We use projects as a catalyst to help young addicts and alcoholics change their lives," Dean says. "It's what was done for me".
As you can see, the task to uncover the concrete bunker was a big one, but his crew – which was run by men who had previously been through the process – was more than up to the challenge.
The project is only partially completed and Dean aims to add more 'apartments' to the underground dwelling. Each summer, he takes on a new crew of men in early recovery, pays them a wage and gives them bed and board in return for their hard work.
They must also attend a daily recovery meeting and work through AA's 12 steps to recovery. Sometimes these men are "fresh out of prison" or "right off the street", according to Dean.
Dean believes the physical labour and teamwork that's inherent in working on a building project encourages recovery because it forces people to help others and stay busy.
"It can change a person," he says.
Dean extended the design, laying a modern home over the top of the existing bunker, combining the new and the old while celebrating the structure's Cold War history.
He cut arches into the wall of the shelter, making the most of the light from new above-ground windows. Dean was able to add the windows after the mound of earth was cleared from the top of the bunker. He aimed to retain organic shapes and uneven surfaces to pay homage to the rough and ready nature of the original bunker.
A breakfast bar has views of a terrace and the spectacular mountains beyond. The space connects the spiritual purpose of the building – to help those who need guidance – with the spiritual feeling evoked by the natural landscape.
Down in the basement, which is reinforced with earthquake-resistant plates, Dean found 45,000 pounds of food. Sturdy wooden shelves were filled with sack upon sack of 27-year-old raisins, rice and wheat.
The original owners had stocked up with enough food and medicine to stay underground for several years.
The team built a homemade conveyor from a rusty old barrel to extract the tubs and sacks of provisions from the bunker's cellar.
"We tried to do it in a labour-efficient manner and also we don't have to trek it through the bunker," one member of the crew said.
The method proved surprisingly effective and soon there were more barrels and sacks above ground than below. Now that Dean has removed them all, he plans to seal off the exposed earth walls and turn the basement into a workshop and laundry room.
"The only thing that he [the previous owner] took was honey, soy sauce, pickles, vinegar and buckwheat," says Dean. For his part, he's kept the mung beans and even the powdered peanut butter that he found in the basement.
Here we can see some of the provisions being driven away on the back of a flatbed truck, patriotically adorned with US flags fluttering against the backdrop of the Montana mountains.
At the time this documentary was filmed, 40 young men had passed through the project, most of whom are "clean, healthy and doing well", according to Dean. "It takes a minute, but what we do here is not forgotten."
Here we see one of his team demolishing a concrete structure on the grounds of the bunker.
Dean re-uses what he can from around the site. "I get so excited about leveraging resources that are sitting there", he says. "It's in my nature... not to buy new stuff." Everything is reclaimed, including the paint, which Dean sourced from thrift stores or was already at the property.
"Mr. Anderson really is one of the good ones", one YouTube user commented on the documentary. "Not just because he recycles discarded humans and discarded bunkers, but because he doesn't treat either of them like trash."
The crew removed the cement rubble and ploughed a path through the old tyres, which they built up into two banks. Between the banks, they placed an old 40-foot shipping container and some train car doors that Dean found at the dump and created a workshop space. They then covered the tyres with earth, stabilising the structure.
This newly designed kitchen and dining room would look at home in any modern house, but it's a surprising find in a subterranean dwelling. He chose furniture and appliances with an industrial feel, made from aluminium or stainless steel, to remind inhabitants of the bunker's original purpose.
Dean and his crew painted the recessed ceiling in a pale sky blue colour and used bright white bulbs with a hint of blue to light it up. The effect mimics daylight and you'd be forgiven at first glance for thinking they were skylights.
This half window was found hidden on the site when Dean first bought the property. It had originally been an escape hatch, for people sheltering inside to flee in case of emergency.
Today, the hatch allows natural light into the kitchen above three stainless steel sinks – washing up there would certainly be a novelty.
The team brought in a lot of local rock to cover the lower area of the bunker. The combination of rock, old tyres and soil that surrounds the building acts as a great insulator and Dean's hoping it'll keep the living areas warm through the winter. It also helps to keep erosion at bay.
"It has been one hell of a ride," Dean says of the unusual bunker conversion project. "The real impetus behind this thing is to help others."
Only time will tell what else he and his team create inside this subterranean apartment complex, but we know it'll be unique, inspiring – and built with a whole lot of heart.
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