This is astonishing to me! When I was a teen I found a WWI era blimp base in south Florida. It looked a lot like that. My understanding is that the base was used for blimps until the early 1920s, but it was used for other government activities until the 1970s. The towers were there. There were WWII vintage radial airplane engines on tall trolleys. The place was loaded with cool stuff. There were bunkers, there was a firing range. It was a great place to explore. We used to dig 50 caliber BMG bullets out of the sand at the range. The big zoo is there now.
Closer to home, in the 1960s, there was an abandoned dump where we could play in tanks, troop carriers, etc. That was cool too.