Johnnie Bryan Hunt was never the most likely candidate to breathe life into what remains of America's unfinished multibillion-dollar science project: the Superconducting Super Collider.

The plain-talking, Stetson-wearing, born-again Arkansan multimillionaire left school after the sixth grade. He made a small fortune in poultry litter and an even bigger fortune in trucking — anyone who's driven I-5 has most likely seen a J.B. Hunt truck, or seven.

Hunt did not use a computer. He had never sent an e-mail. Yet, at the age of 79, he sunk millions into a half-built circular particle accelerator in Texas in the hope of turning it into one of the largest and most-secure data storage facilities in America.

But this was to be only the latest in the collider's history of disappointment. Read on for photos of the facility as it stands now and how it came to stand empty in Texas in the first place.

The Superconducting Super Collider has been a stain on U.S. scientific history ever since the project was canceled in 1993.

It was hoped the collider would reveal new forms of matter and energy, like the elusive Higgs boson, by firing proton beams in opposite directions and smashing atoms into each other inside a 54-mile circular tunnel buried 250 feet underground.

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) may have been disappointed last fall when their smaller particle accelerator, the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider, had to be shut down because of a faulty electrical connection. But at least they have one.

The U.S. had to give up its project in Texas after Congress yanked funding — though not before the Department of Energy had built infrastructure, warehouses and almost 15 miles of underground tunnels at a $2 billion cost to the U.S. taxpayer.

Today, the abandoned site stands as a haunting monument to the false starts that have plagued the collider. After the project was shut down the tunnel shafts were filled and the warehouses abandoned. The complex was handed over to Ellis County, and a 10-year period of stagnation began.

Shattered glass litters the entrance to one building, while tile panels are missing from the ceiling of another. In the offices, a 1990 Ellis County telephone directory titled Super Collider Country can still be found on a desk, and the head-shot of a 1980s pinup girl flashes a suggestive look from a wall.

There have been rumors about alternative uses for the site — a movie studio, a recording complex, even an anti-terrorism training facility — but they all came to nothing. Until the summer of 2006, when the Pinnacle Group, a development company of which Hunt was a partner, bought the site for just $6.5 million.

This author interviewed Hunt soon after his purchase while researching a book about America's richest people. (Shortly before Hunt resigned as chairman of his trucking company in 1993, Forbes estimated his net worth at $415 million.)

Hunt was juggling more than a dozen business ventures at the time — drilling for oil in Arkansas, importing tractors from South Korea, transporting containers and building homes. Collider Data Center was one of the many exciting things he had to look forward to after his daily morning prayers. And it mattered little that he knew nothing about either particle accelerators or data storage.

"I am always dealing in things I know nothing about," he said. "But I have been favored in so many things, because somebody always shows up who knows what to do."

Hunt's unique selling point for Collider Data Center was its location and infrastructure.

You cannot build a particle accelerator just anywhere, and the Department of Energy had chosen its site carefully. To mitigate the risk of hazardous material passing nearby, it selected land 5 miles from the nearest truck route and 4 miles from the nearest rail line. The collider is clear of flight paths and out of hurricane, tsunami, earthquake and flood zones.

The complex, at Waxahachie, about 40 miles south of Dallas, is accessible in case of emergency by service roads linking it with I-35. It sits on an independent power grid capable of delivering 10 megawatts of power (and up to 100 megawatts if needed), and it has its own dedicated fiber optic line. Its two warehouses can support floor loads of 500 pounds per square foot, perfect for the enormous servers that Hunt intended to buy.

The Uptime Institute, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, divides data centers into four tiers. All hardware in the highest category, Tier 4, must have dual power inputs, so the center can perform maintenance or withstand at least one unplanned power failure without affecting performance.

There are only about a dozen such data centers in the United States today. And Collider Data Center had the potential to join their ranks. The idea was not to use the tunnels for storing data — the risk of underground water was too great. Instead, the two warehouses, totaling about 170,000 square feet, would be converted, with the floors raised at least 2½ feet so that a constant stream of cool air could be blown beneath the servers.

Converting the warehouses was not going to be easy — or cheap. The cost was estimated at between $20 million and $100 million.

"What turns me on is when 20 of your best friends tell you it won't work," Hunt said. "I think that does something to me."

Hunt's most obvious obstacle was finding clients. But GVA Cawley, the real estate firm representing Collider Data Center, said that a number of Fortune 500 companies had already shown interest. Meanwhile, the U.S. government was said to have raised the possibility of using the abandoned tunnels to store vaccines.

Almost 20 years after the Department of Energy had begun work on the collider, it looked like the site would finally be put to good use.

Then, in December 2006, less than six months after investing in the property, Hunt slipped on a patch of ice. He fell, banged his head, and died a few days later.

Collider Data Center's future was thrown into doubt. Hunt may not have known anything about data storage, but he was a driving force behind the project. Eventually and unsurprisingly it was shelved. Now, the Superconducting Super Collider is on the market once again.

The sale is being handled by Hunt's partners in the Pinnacle Group. And the collider is still being marketed as a perfect location for data storage.

John George, a Pinnacle spokesman, said he hopes whoever takes over the facility will be able to put the defunct tunnels to use, perhaps using their constant 58-to-62-Fahrenheit air as an underground cooling system for the buildings above.

George is cautious about the sale price, saying the site was recently appraised at $20 million, but acknowledging it's likely to be worth less in the current economy.

"It's a beautiful facility, and we believe its time will come," said George. "We're just not sure if we will live to see it."