Old missile sites hold Cold War mystiqueBy Jeff Martin - USA Today
Posted : Thursday Dec 4, 2008 6:43:24 EST
Merle Paaverud was raised on a farm near a nuclear missile site outside Finley, N.D.
He remembers how missile sites in the area were “shrouded in mystery.”
“Here we were farming around them, raising kids and going to school, and we were sitting in one of the most powerful areas in the world as far as nuclear weapons,” Paaverud, 59, says. “We never really knew what was going on, but it was life and death, part of the chess game that was going on in the world.”
Today, Paaverud is the director of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Next summer, he will oversee the opening to the public of the former Oscar Zero missile silo and launch facility near Cooperstown, N.D.
The museum, set to open next July, is one of several new uses being found for missile sites, ranging from homes and businesses to recreation and tourist attractions. There is increasing interest in these sites, as Americans who came of age during the Cold War want to learn more about the history of the era, Paaverud and others say.
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http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/12/gns_missile_sites_120308/%2euhc comment: This reminds me of Kathy Kelly getting arrested for planting corn on a missile site in 1988 --> http://will.illinois.edu/publicsquare/commentary/2007/09/