Minuteman Missile National Historic Site | Visit Rapid City

Learn more about the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site: https://www.visitrapidcity.com/blog/day-minuteman-missile-national-historic-site

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Wild history unfolds as you explore the three part park called the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Hear from Park Ranger Jim Boensch, former missileer at the site, on why this park is a must-see while visiting. Located just 60 minutes away from Rapid City, SD near Badlands National Park.

Video Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:32 Why were the missiles in South Dakota?
1:02 What was working there like?
1:51 Missile Deactivation
2:23 Creation of Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
2:38 What can visitors see at the site?
3:09 Launch Control Center Tours
3:54 Virtual Tours
4:17 Come Visit

Transcription:
Nuclear safety was our job. We didn't want to be the ones to accidentally start a nuclear war
This is the last remaining Minuteman One Minuteman modernized launch control center/launcher in the world.

The reason for placing them where they are is,
first of all they're far enough north where you don't have to build bigger boosters to get into the targets in the southern most part of the Soviet Union. If we had a trade-off on missile on missile from both sides - a counter force strike okay, we would lose far less people than if we placed the missile launchers in near highly populated areas.
I served there from 1971 to 1975 there at Delta and at the other launch control centers on the 44th Missile Wing. We were operators. It was a 24-hour tour. Another crew would relieve us the next morning. We did that eight times a month back in my day. It took two of the launch control centers with two officers needed to launch anyone up to all 50 of the missiles so one crew couldn't go crazy and launch the missiles. Now there were some harrier times there where systems went awry but in all cases regardless of which side thought they were being attacked, cooler heads prevailed and they said “hey this does not look logical but let's wait five minutes and see what happens.”
In the Start Treaty of 1991 both sides took their least modified missiles, both sides cheerfully gave up their missiles there. We went from about 65,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War down to less than 10,000.
Now the launch control facilities and launch control centers those other 14 here at the missile one were sold back farmers and ranchers.
Visitors can expect to find a three-part Park. We have our Visitor Center at Exit 131, our launch control facility launch control center at Exit 127, just four miles down the road, and 15 miles heading toward Wall and Rapid City is our missile Delta nine.
We've got our Museum which is excellent and we've also got a great park movie that runs 28 minutes. The launch control center that's the Crown Jewel of the whole park right there. In the summertime you need to make your reservations 90 days in advance. The limitation there is the elevator size. It's only, it will hold six people plus the tour guide and the launch control center is very very small it's like a shipping container in size.
We offer two tours in the afternoon during the winter season. During the summer we offer four. The tour about 45 minutes, we take them through the launch control facility and the launch control center and describe the equipment and what it was like to live there and what World War III would have actually been like.

You can experience these cell phone tours and all this information is also on our website. We've got the virtual tours except there's no voice over so you can poke around though in the launch control facility and launch control center into the launcher too you go down into two maintenance areas of the missile you just don't know what you're looking at. It’s a very unusual Park, it's unlike any other National Park you'll ever go to. Friendly people and some pretty wild history here. I highly recommend it.