Little more than a decade ago it was still a military zone, site of many a secret cold war installation and forbidden even to Russian citizens living beyond the region.
A permanent tug-of-war installation will soon be set up at the Hall of Science, Mr. Weiss said.
During the Cold War, the installation served for more than two decades as the headquarters of the U.S. VII Corps, which was equipped and trained to fight a total war in Europe against the Soviet Union.
In the 1990s he rediscovered the human figure, mixing clay, steel and wood, in works like "The Trojan War," an installation of 40 sculptures describing the heroes and gods of the Iliad, and "The Last Judgment," a somber installation, inspired by the war in the Balkans, dominated by a great wooden entryway topped with a stoneware bell.
It later returned to being a state park, but the remnants of the Cold War defense installation are still extant.
The Benton Air Force Station, a Cold War radar installation in the park, operated from 1951 to 1975 and still serves as airport radar for nearby Wilkes-Barre and as the Red Rock Job Corps Center.
This concentration on heavy industry at the expense of light industry and agriculture has been criticized; however, given China's general lack of heavy industrial capacity before and during the war years, the installations that survived the war and its aftermath were of great importance to the country after 1949.
Indeed, Mr. Gates's first stop on his weeklong visit to Asia was to Guam, where he took a helicopter tour on Friday to review Pentagon plans to spend $15 billion over the next six years to upgrade and expand World War II-era installations to accommodate thousands of additional American troops, and to broaden training missions with regional partners like Japan.
Growth of new subscribers is leveling off and providers, locked in a price war, are cutting installation fees and giving away modems.
