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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 2015)
4C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2015 PARTING SHOT A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers Fog rises from the trees near the Astoria Column at sunset in October. Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian ODDITY Wyoming Peacekeeper historic site in the works By MEAD GRUVER Associated Press CHEYENNE, Wyo. — One of the most stressful and least glamorous jobs in the U.S. Air Force during the Cold War went to the men and women who stood ready ‘round the clock to launch one of the dead- liest weapons ever made, the Peacekeeper nuclear missile. A few years from now, one of the nuclear launch centers where these workers, known as missileers, were stationed, will be open to visitors. The Air Force has been restoring the missile alert facility, called Quebec-01, as a state historic site. The facility, located on the lonesome southeast Wyoming prairie, was active as recently as a decade ago. “What they’re going to encounter is basically what it looked like when the last mis- sileers went up the elevator when it was decommissioned,” said Milward Simpson, director of the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Natural Re- sources. Quebec-01 will be the only public tourism site directly as- sociated with the Peacekeeper, which carried 10 warheads. Some credit the 50 Peacekeep- ers under the purview of the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. War- ren Air Force Base with helping to end the Cold War. Alan Rogers/The Casper Star-Tribune A tunnel leads to an underground bunker housing the launch control center at the Air Force’s Quebec-01 Missile Alert Facility north of Cheyenne, Wyo. The Air Force has been restoring the missile alert facility as a state historic site. toric Site in South Dakota, and Missile Site Park near Greeley, Colorado. Crowds of strangers weren’t exactly desirable when these sites were active. “If you parked your car at the 39-mile marker and were lingering a little too long, may- be you’d get some company,” Secretive sites Simpson said. :\RPLQJ RI¿FLDOV KRSH WR The Air Force decommis- draw at least 50,000 people a sioned the Peacekeepers in year to Quebec-01, a stone’s 2005. Since then, all Peace- throw off Interstate 25 and half keeper silos have been de- an hour north of Cheyenne. VWUR\HG DQG WKHLU ¿YH PLVVLOH Other preserved sites associat- alert facilities disabled under ed with the missile era in the the START II treaty. The Air Great Plains and Rocky Moun- Force has set aside Quebec-01 tain states include the Ronald for preservation and begun Reagan Minuteman Missile gathering up computers and site in North Dakota, the Min- other hardware for an interpre- uteman Missile National His- tive re-installation. “We have conducted a com- prehensive search of all the old equipment that used to be in there. And lo and behold, we probably have about 90 percent of it,” said Travis Beckwith, cultural resources manager at F.E. Warren Air Force Base on the outskirts of Cheyenne. Quebec-01 started out as a Minuteman I missile alert fa- cility in the mid-1960s. It be- came a Minuteman III facility LQWKHPLGVDQG¿QDOO\D Peacekeeper site in the mid- 1980s. 24-hour shifts Seventy feet underground, buckled in chairs behind a 5-foot-thick steel-and-concrete blast door, pairs of missileers worked 24-hour shifts every few days. Their home away from home was a steel-rein- forced concrete capsule inside a concrete bunker called a launch control center. The capsule sat on four heavy springs, shock protection from nuclear blasts. Should the worst come to pass, an escape tunnel led upward but stopped short of the surface. “They give you a shovel and you have to try and dig your way out,” said Todd Thi- bodeau, planning coordinator for the state parks department. “It’s questionable how well this would work. But they really did try to think of a lot of things as they were putting this togeth- er.” The missileers’ routine in- cluded drilling for launch. The ties manager, cook, communi- cations specialist and security personnel provided support for the pair in the launch control center below. They worked in a building resembling a ranch house with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom for sleeping between duty, and recreation room with Morale was high pool and foosball tables. Morale among the young The Air Force plans to trans- staff seemed high though some fer Quebec-01 to Wyoming were barely away from home LQ 6WDWH RI¿FLDOV KRSH IRU WKH ¿UVW WLPH VDLG 'DQQ\ to open the historic site to the Sprong, a former Air Force fa- public in 2019. cilities manager who inspected Quebec-01 will honor the the sites. missileers who continue to this “They needed a little super- day oversee F.E. Warren’s 150 vision sometimes. ‘Hey, you Minuteman III missiles from need to get up and polish your similar facilities, said Sprong. boots, get your chow and take a “They’re the foundation of our defense. They’re the last of shower,”’ Sprong said. Up on the surface, a facili- the line,” he said. procedure required the two missileers to simultaneously turn launch keys spread too far apart for either to turn by them- selves. 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