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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Cold War tourism

South Dakota Minuteman nuclear missile site draws curious viewers

By: Bartley Kives

18/07/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

(ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

IF you’re driving through western South Dakota this summer, it’s possible to visit a place where the world could have ended — and maybe take home a souvenir.

This is no hyperbole. In 1999, the U.S. government turned two components of a decommissioned nuclear missile field along Interstate 90 into a tourist attraction, mainly to remind future generations how close the Soviets and Americans came to destroying each other during the Cold War and taking the rest of humanity with them.

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, which began offering guided tours in 2004, is the only place on the planet where you can hear uniformed rangers from the U.S. National Park Service cheerfully rattle off trivia about intercontinental ballistic missile development and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

From the 1960s through the 1990s, 150 nuclear missile silos were buried in the badlands of western South Dakota, controlled by 15 launch-control centres interspersed with cattle ranches.

The nuclear facilities were unassuming structures. Ranchers, truckers and tourists spent three decades driving right past them on Interstate 90 without realizing how much destructive power was embedded in the crumbly sediment mere metres off the road.

But after the first George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991, the nukes were removed and the launch-control centres were shut down.

One of those silos -- now bearing an dummy nuke below a glass roof -- as well as a control centre have been preserved so tourists can get an up-close view of the global annihilation that never was.

While an unarmed missile makes for an interesting monument, the launch-control centre is a truly mind-blowing place to visit.

Delta One, as the facility was called, is just a bungalow with a kitchen, a couple of dorm rooms and a TV room, when you see it above ground.

But 9.5 metres below the surface, you can visit the cramped launch-control room where U.S. air force personnel spent endless hours waiting for the command to rain nuclear death upon the Soviet Union.

Had the nukes ever been launched, they would have taken less than 30 minutes to reach their targets. Missiles from the U.S.S.R. would have arrived on U.S. soil at roughly the same time.

Theoretically, the launch-control room was protected from a nuclear blast by massive shock absorbers and a steel blast door. But the only real threat in the room was boredom, as 30 years' worth of subterranean shifts went by with only a couple of minor scares, including a couple involving U.S. presidents who merely wanted to say hello to the folks in the field.

Inside the control room, the walls are lined with rows of dials and displays that exemplify the analog age. There is no "red button" -- nobody could accidentally launch a nuke by leaning on the wrong knob -- but the dual set of keys that you see in many movies did in fact exist.

On my tour, I was lucky enough to have a former missile-launch controller serve as my guide. He was an amiable retiree with a sardonic sense of humour about his former job as a horseman of an aborted apocalypse.

My fellow tourists included three university students from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, a U.S. enemy during the Cold War. On a chilly spring morning, the young men from Tashkent posed for a picture in front of the decommissioned missile silo.

There were smiles all around, despite the knowledge that 450 Minuteman III missiles are still on standby in silos in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.

MINUTEMAN MISSILE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

What: From now until Sept. 30, guided tours of the Minuteman launch control centre and missile silo are offered twice daily Monday through Saturday, at 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Starting in October and over the winter, tours will be offered Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. Tours are free but space is limited, so book well in advance. Call 605-433-5552 for reservations, up to three months in advance. Tours take about 90 minutes.

Where: Guided Minuteman tours depart from a National Historic Site office in the tiny hamlet of Cactus Flats, S.D. Driving along Interstate 90 from either east of west, take exit 131 and drive south on South Dakota Highway 240 for about a kilometre. The site office is one of the only buildings on your right, the west side of the road. You will drive to the launch control centre and missile silo in your own vehicle.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 18, 2009 F9

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