The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site & the Badlands

Monday, Aug 29 2011

The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site & the Badlands, South Dakota Badlands

Today is overcast and raining.  The forecast was for intermittent showers, however the day would prove to be rain with moments of stoppage.  Great day for touring inside, but not outside as it is grey and the clouds are really low.

We head out to the Minuteman Missile silo and Launch facility to take a tour.  First was the silo, which housed a Minuteman II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.  This is the only silo left as the government blew up the other 1000 silos in 1993.

Because it is raining, and there is a notice not to wipe the glass, the photos of the missile in the silo are not the best, but give you an idea of how big it was.  One of these missiles were 1.2 Megatons, which is more than all the bombs dropped in WW2 by all countries, including the 2 atomic bombs dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  The Silo that housed the missile was 80 feet deep with walls of concrete 4 feet thick  housing it.

We were able to get a tour of the launch facility and were brought down 31 feet underground to the “capsule” where the staff responsible for launching these big beasts kept 12 hour vigils of being ready "to push the button" (in reality turned the keys)

Basically it took 4 people to agree upon launching the missile, and there were codes and code books done up daily to ensure security and safety.  The chairs had seat belts included because when one of these were launched, the earth shook that much.

After lunch, we head out to the Badlands National Park, which looks like something you would expect to see in a Lord of the Rings movie.  The colors today were probably not as vivid as I imagine it would be on a clear sunny blue sky day.  Nevertheless, we are here to see it and can’t do much about the drizzle and sometimes heavy rain.

In days of old, this area was the muddy bottom of a very large river.  The river drained when the Rockies and other mountains rose, thus creating the spires of mud and earth which eroded from the water.  

We  had come up through the south so we saw the Buffalo Grassland, and then headed north to take the loop 240 road over the passes.  Even though it was a thoroughly grey day, it was cool to see.

We also stop at a Prairie Homestead historical sight, where the house was a sod house.  I remember my Grandpa Thompson saying in a book of memoirs of his area that his father and uncle and their wives lived in a cave the first 2 years that they homesteaded.  So I imagine they lived in something like this or worse.  The main part of the house was dug into a hillside with the front and possibly like this one, wood covering walls 2 - 3 feet high, however I am not sure about this.  Was pretty sobering as to the space, size and the primitive feeling.  I can't imagine how a person would live in a place like this with dust allergies!

Tomorrow we head back towards home, and will stop at Little Big Horn, and plan to say in Billings Montana for the night.