Old missile sites hold Cold War mystique

Old missile sites hold Cold War mystique
By Jeff Martin - USA Today
Posted : Thursday Dec 4, 2008 6:43:24 EST

Merle Paaverud was raised on a farm near a nuclear missile site outside Finley, N.D.

He remembers how missile sites in the area were “shrouded in mystery.”

“Here we were farming around them, raising kids and going to school, and we were sitting in one of the most powerful areas in the world as far as nuclear weapons,” Paaverud, 59, says. “We never really knew what was going on, but it was life and death, part of the chess game that was going on in the world.”

Today, Paaverud is the director of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Next summer, he will oversee the opening to the public of the former Oscar Zero missile silo and launch facility near Cooperstown, N.D.

The museum, set to open next July, is one of several new uses being found for missile sites, ranging from homes and businesses to recreation and tourist attractions. There is increasing interest in these sites, as Americans who came of age during the Cold War want to learn more about the history of the era, Paaverud and others say.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/12/gns_missile_sites_120308/%2e



uhc comment: This reminds me of Kathy Kelly getting arrested for planting corn on a missile site in 1988 --> http://will.illinois.edu/publicsquare/commentary/2007/09/

i remember coming back from the 'pond' out in the country, fairly late at night, when i was about 11 or 12 years old or so...a convoy was transporting the missile to the site via back country roads...as a young boy, i was fascinated by the jeeps, trucks, etc...most impressive, even in the dark, was the long trailer with the tarp-covered object..

through a set of circumstances, i was able to visit the missile site during and after construction...masssive, deep (and fairly narrow) hole in the ground which, during construction, large trucks could drive down into...

from north dakota down through southern kansas (i'm not sure about bases in oklahoma) there were missile bases everywhere...the Great Plains were the lauching pad for 'the day'...of course, Omaha and Wichita (McConnell) based some of the heavy flying arsenals...

i was at a friends farm in north-central kansas in the '80s when we heard a distant muted 'roar'...he said 'here comes a B-52' and maybe a minute or two passed when, fairly suddenly, considering, a giant B-52 was approaching from the south at a very low altitude, heading north towards Omaha...i found out later that the Flint Hills/prairie were used for low-level approach practice...

on a purely technical/engineering/production level the B-52 is something to behold...