Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

Al Hall

Bruce Blair

Craig Manson

David Blackhurst

Dick Cheney

Gary Overby

Gary Powers

Gene S. Williams

Press release by the USAF from the Cold War concerning the roles and operation of the 4ACCS

On September 11, 1961, the groundbreaking ceremony for Ellsworth AFB's Minuteman installations took place at Site L-6 near Bear Butte. The festivities started with a bang. While the Sturgis High School band played, representatives from Boeing, Kiewit, the Corps of Engineers, and Ellsworth AFB set off an explosive charge to begin the excavation.

By 1947 it had become apparent to most observers that the world was splitting in two–East and West–leaving the inevitable conflict of the Cold War. Quickly the lines in the sand were drawn even deeper as the Soviets and Americans clashed ideologically and militarily on a number of fronts.

Acts of resistance against America’s nuclear defense program began in the late 1950s and included both solitary protests and organized groups. Individual protests tended to be carried out by local residents, while the early group actions were typically organized by national groups. By the 1980s, wide-spread locally-based activism occurred throughout the missile fields.

While the Ellsworth AFB sites were under construction, the Air Force was building several other Minuteman installations. By the end of 1967, the Nation had 1,000 Minuteman missiles on alert in six separate deployment areas located throughout the north-central United States.

Two Air Force officers served 24-hour tours underground as watchkeepers over ten Minuteman II missiles during the Cold War. Learn more about the routines they followed while working the front line of the Cold War.

In 1979, the U.S. Senate commissioned a study on the effects of nuclear war. They wanted to know what would happen to government, the economy, and society if nuclear war were to break out between the USSR and the United States. What would the country be like afterwards? The result was an official study titled, “The Effects of Nuclear War,” which included a unique fictional imagining of the aftermath of a full-scale nuclear war on the city of Charlottesville, Virginia.

As Cold War tensions escalated throughout the 1950’s, both United States and the Soviet Union were forced to confront the unprecedented prospect of sudden, massive losses to their populations. The question of civil defense—the protection of civilian lives during a nuclear exchange—was passionately debated in the United States.