As I continue on my journey, I am posting in chronological order until I get to my current location, Glacier National Park. Today’s post is especially appropriate for the 4th of July because it takes a look at protecting our country during the Cold War years.
Families in the far western portion of South Dakota knew there were nuclear missiles near them. There were hundreds of Minutemen missiles hidden beneath the sunflowers & wheat, the cows & the corn of America’s Great Plains during the Cold War. Minuteman Missile National Historic Site commemorates this perilous period of world history.
Each launch facility had 10 missiles to control. The missiles were about 3 miles apart, grouped around the launch control facility.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, the US & the Soviet Union followed a strategy called MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction. Neither side would risk launching an attack because the other side would launch an equally destructive counterattack.
The pictures below are of the Delta-01 Launch Control Facility. It is located several miles from the visitor center. Looking at it from the road, you would never guess what is hidden just below the surface.
The missile field was operational, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 365 days a year, for thirty years. Despite the searing summer heat and brutal winter cold of South Dakota, operational status of the missiles was maintained at all times. Meanwhile, local landowners and members of small towns in the central and northern Great Plains lived literally side by side with nuclear weapons. In the background to all this, were the American people who enjoyed unsurpassed freedoms and prosperity yet also knew that their way of life could be destroyed in a matter of hours by nuclear war. This same harsh fact was true for nations all around the world.
https://www.nps.gov/mimi/what-is-so-special-about-this-place.htm
Camping with Christi 
Thanks for some more interesting history facts! You are our traveling teacher,and tour guide!
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