So last Friday I had to drive down to Cheyenne to get the 15,000 mile service on my Hyundai. I scheduled the appointment for 12:20pm to allow the 3 hour drive and time for lunch at Chili’s in Cheyenne. After lunch, I took the car in and two and a half hours later was ready to return home.
On the way down I noticed a sign (about 45 minutes North of Cheyenne) for a site called Quebec-01, a former missile silo. On the way back up to Casper they highway department was working on the bridge over the exit to Quebec-01 so I exited to check it out.
The site is just a couple of blocks off the freeway, and I drove in.
It’s pretty unassuming, just a garage and moderate building. It turns out it is a former Peacekeeper missile control site. When the Peacekeeper missiles were decommissioned in 2005 the site was scrapped and shutdown. Eventually the state took over and it was rebuilt as a museum site. The chare is $8.00 for the tour ($7.00 for military). The base building was for the guard force and support personnel (e.g. the cook). Below ground was the bunker for the two man launch crew.
At the bottom of the elevator is the blast door. An amusing fact, as initially installed it could only be opened from the outside. Once locked in the 2 man control team could not leave until relieved.
All in all it was interesting, but a whole different environment than what I was used to. The two-man crew was locked in for 24-hours at a time. They went through the launch sequence where they would get the launch codes, verify them and they would each have a key to turn at the designated time. In addition, another crew would have to do the same process and turn their keys at the same time to actually launch the missiles.