Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Joyride with the Joneses

This place was a BLAST!! Get it? A Blast?? But seriously you won’t want to “miss”ile this historic site. We stopped here before we drove through the Badlands. The park consists of three different sites along Interstate 90, our first stop was the Visitor Center at Exit 131. The Visitor Center was not very busy at all and the Rangers were great, they were serving chocolate cake to all the visitors to celebrate the end of the cold war. This site was established in 1999 and is the first national park dedicated exclusively to the Cold War.

We walked around the visitor center and toured the museum for about an hour. The kids worked on their Junior Ranger program for MMNHS as we drove across South Dakota. We actually printed it from the website so they could have something to do in the car. They finished this up in the museum, did their ranger pledge, earned their badges and got our Passport cancellations. Not bad for a day’s work.

We then headed to Badlands National Park, see separate blog for this, for the rest of this day.

I purchased tickets 90 days in advance so we could all do the Delta-01 tour. Our tour was the next morning at 10 am. When we got there the Ranger that did our Junior Rangers was our tour guide. What an absolute riot, this guy was great! He had jokes, puns and information overload. My (almost) teenager was given a run for his money with this guy, it was perfect. He was even able to keep my 10 year old interested.

The underground Launch Control Facility has the same equipment and furnishings it did while it was operational and it shows, reminds me so much of our old government furnished lab facility. The silo at Delta-01 held a missile for 30 years. This place really preserves opportunities to explore the history of the nuclear arms race. I was amazed at how much we learned, right down to the pencil sharpener!!