In S.D., a disarming monument to the Cold War is set for launch
CACTUS FLAT, S.D. -- The latest tourist attraction in a state that already boasts Mount Rushmore and Badlands National Park offers a glimpse behind the scenes of one of the most secretive sites from the Cold War era, a place where for three decades military officers stood ready to launch a nuclear missile at the former Soviet Union.
In addition to an opportunity to gaze into a silo housing the shell of a 51-foot-tall weapon, the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site will include a theater, museum, and visitors center. Tourism officials are betting that a look back to a time when the world seemed on the edge of nuclear annihilation will be a big draw.
"It's close proximity to Badlands National Park, and the fact that most travelers visit a historical site or museum during their vacation should result in increased visitors' stays and spending," Patty Van Gerpen said.
For decades, motorists have sped by the gravel road off Interstate 90 that leads to the Delta One launch control facility in western South Dakota without knowing that the single-story building was an important nerve center in the nation's defense.
Now the secret has been disclosed with the transformation of the launch site, which followed the 1993 decommissioning of the Delta One facility under the provisions of the START treaty reached between President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
The debate over nuclear arms will be a key part of the Minuteman Missile attraction. "People from all around the world with different points of view will be able to come together and debate and think and discuss their points of view on the Cold War," park superintendent Mark Herberger said. "It's an interesting aspect that not all park areas can have."
Around the clock for 30 years, a two-officer crew kept vigil at Delta One and each of the 44 other Minuteman launch sites. They worked 24-hour shifts in capsules with 4-foot-thick walls deep underground that were designed to withstand the blast of any nuclear attack. Each crew ran a flight of 10 missiles scattered across the western prairie around them in underground silos.
Had they received the command that never came, their duties were clear: Insert and simultaneously turn the firing keys that would send an electronic signal through miles of underground communications networks, and ignite a solid-fuel rocket armed with a 1.2-megaton thermonuclear warhead aimed at the Soviet Union.
Thirty feet above them on the surface, eight members of the security, maintenance, and food staff worked and lived in a building surrounded by a fence and guarded by a Peacekeeper armored vehicle. Their jobs were to serve and protect the site, as well as the launch crew below.
This summer, the National Park Service began putting Delta One and one of its nearby missile sites, Delta Nine, on limited public display, conducting two reservation-only tours daily for six people. The site's grand opening is slated for the end of the decade.
Describing visitors' reactions when they look into the missile silo for the first time and see the Minuteman pointed skyward, Herberger said, "It's one of those 'wow' experiences."
Visitors are guided through the site by someone who knows it well: Joe Bruch, a chief master sergeant retired from the Air Force, spent most of his 20-year military career on assignments involving nuclear weapons, including serving as a flight security controller at the Kilo Flight launch control center near Spearfish in the early 1970s. The Kilo center is similar to the Delta One site.
Delta One and 14 others like it made up the 44th Strategic Missile Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, with 150 missiles dispersed across about 13,500 square miles of western South Dakota. Scores of similar fields of Minuteman, Minuteman II, and Minuteman III missiles were clustered around other Air Force bases in states including Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. 