“These are shrines to an Armageddon that didn’t happen,” Reynolds says. Decommissioned in 1991, it is now a national park. Photographer Adam Reynolds traveled to the facility in January. Thousands of Air Force personnel cycled through the facility over the 28 years it was operational, and its security detail played board games in the rec room while they waited for signs that intruders-from Russian spies to the more frequent culprits, jackrabbits-had breached the perimeter. Known as Delta, the launch center in South Dakota controlled ten Minutemen, the most common missile in America’s nuclear arsenal. A sparsely populated region far from major American cities, the Plains also provided the shortest route to Moscow: some 5,000 miles over the North Pole. The first missile silos were i nstalled across the Great Plains in 1959. As the Oscar-01 MAF is one of only two surviving Minuteman II ICBM missile alert facilities in the world, it will continue to remain a rare and important historic resource, and integral to the interpretation of the Cold War history of the United States.The rec room at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota. Since 1996, Whiteman Air Force Base has continued to maintain the Oscar-01 site as a military heritage center and historic site. Additionally, custom building systems, such as the two blast doors and escape hatch are uniquely character-defining, and join created features such as hand-painted murals, historic inscriptions and other period finishes and effects associated with the Oscar-01 mission. The individual character-defining features in the LCC and LCEB are numerous, and include original, structural and mechanical system elements, objects, and personnel effects, contributing to the exceptional level of overall historic integrity. The Oscar-01 facility is an intricately-engineered historic built environment, and unique surviving physical example of US military history. However, in the lower level, forty-five feet below ground, the underground facilities have remained largely original, and retain an exceptional level of historic integrity. With the exception of the Security Control Center and the elevator, all current interior materials and building systems are modern. The exterior and interior of the above-ground building have been updated in the recent past for energy efficiency and sustainability, however, the original floorplan has been retained with minor modifications and system upgrades. The Support Building is a non-descript ranch-style structure of wood-frame construction, typical of the period of construction, and currently sheathed in aluminum clapboard siding and a modern asphalt shingle roof. These two sub-surface wings are connected by a Tunnel Junction and accessed by an elevator. The facility consists of a one-story surface structure, assembled as a Launch Control Support Building (LCSB), and two sub-surface, re-enforced concrete encapsulated steel pods- a Launch Control Center (LCC) and Launch Control Equipment Building (LCEB). The Oscar-01 Missile Alert Facility (MAF) was constructed at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri in 1963, and determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) by Missouri SHPO in 1998.
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