The exterior of the Quebec-01 Missile Alert Facility, which is now a museum, (U.S. National Park Service)
(Tribune News Service) — The hidden Cold War command post in Wyoming that still shapes America’s story
Fifty feet underground about 16 miles south of Chugwater, America’s last and most desperate line of defense laid occupied but thankfully unused for 62 years.
There, in a reinforced steel capsule protected by a roughly 15-ton door, two missileers would sit and wait for a doomsday call that never came.
Their primary duty was to monitor communications from U.S. Air Force officials. If a call came with proper authorization, they would unleash what was once called “most destructive force on the planet”: LGM-118 Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles, each carrying a payload of 10 nuclear warheads that could reach just about anywhere in its 6,000-mile range inside half an hour.
Now a museum, the Quebec-01 Missile Alert Facility is a testament to Wyoming’s place in Americana, and the missiles it once housed speak to the state’s habit of shouldering burdens the rest of the country doesn’t want.
That burden was the Peacekeeper itself.
When they were rolled out into the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal, they were met with apprehension from locals, according to news reports from the time and Quebec-01 Superintendent Alexis Pratt.
The bunker is comprised of 10 silos and the core MAF, Pratt told the Star-Tribune, and reports indicate it was built over about a year and a half between 1962 and 1964.
As the Minuteman program experienced both breakthroughs and setbacks, Star-Tribune articles from the early 1960s reveal that F.E. Warren Air Force Base was being considered for Minuteman deployment by December 1961.
Another in March 1962 described housing concerns as a “pinch for” the facility just 12 days before the missiles’ home north of Cheyenne was confirmed.
News reports indicate that an $84 million contract to excavate missile silos across parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado was awarded in October 1962.
Holes had been dug by March 1963, and bidding for the next phase began in October that year. Then-state of the art Minuteman ICBMs, each containing one nuclear warhead, arrived by June 1964.
In the 1970s, that stock was upgraded to Minuteman III missiles, Pratt said. A decade or so later, a new kid arrived on the block: The controversial bad boy LGM-118 Peacekeeper, which was rolled out through the 1980s.
The Peacekeepers carried the most warheads of any American ICBM and matched the eight-to-10 warhead capacity of the Soviet R-36M, which could carry eight to 10 warheads.
Pratt said though the missiles arrived in 1986, discussion over their placement upon completion of the “MX” program — short for “missile experimental” — began well before.
In 1982, news of the Peacekeeper’s impending arrival in Wyoming broke. The Star-Tribune published several opinions on the project, which was called “MX” in development. Farmers, laymen, activists and others wrote to the Star-Tribune and organized protests
One described the MX project as “mankind’s final matches.”
“As we now grope in helpless wonder with the awarding of ‘the Peacekeeper’ to Wyoming,” Jon E. Brady wrote on Dec. 5, “it is best that some real reflection begin on ‘what we have wrought’ in order to answer ‘can’t we put asunder?’”
In that same edition, John L. Quealy said the project would “bring misery to others” and asked “why not take the $25 billion and do some good for the people of this great country?”
Another asked readers to “join Citizens Alliance against MX, save Wyoming.”
On that opinion page, a political cartoon titled “The Scarlet Letter” labeled several political figures with “MX” on their foreheads.
Over a handful of editions, largely published in December 1982 before the missiles’ home was finalized, dozens of opinion pieces and letters to the editor decried the MX project. Some feared it would make Wyoming a target, while others said the very nature of the weapon showed the “banality of evil deeds.”
Ultimately, Wyoming proved more appealing — and put up less of a fight — than its counterparts in Nebraska and Colorado, Pratt said, so the rockets came to cowboy country.
Pratt said the Peacekeepers arrived in 1986 and served until the early 2000s, when arms-control treaties reshaped the nuclear arsenal. Because the treaties capped warheads instead of missiles, the Peacekeeper’s ability to carry up to 10 warheads became a liability rather than an advantage, accelerating a return to the more economical Minuteman.
Once the Peacekeepers left, so too did Quebec-01’s usefulness to the Air Force. In 2006, the base shut down permanently.
Staffing at the site was pretty consistent and remained between eight and 12 throughout the cold war, Pratt said.
Workers included two missileers, a facility manager, a chef and anywhere between four and eight security staff.
The MAF itself is a residential building with recreation opportunities like a TV, DVD player and at one time a game console.
Those are undoubtedly more closely related to the facility’s later years of operation, which concluded in 2004.
In the museum now, those rooms more closely resemble an upscale college dorm than what a layman would likely expect of military lodging. Bunk beds were commonplace, as most staff shared rooms.
The only ones afforded their own quarters were the chef and facilities manager, Pratt said.
Security staff and off-shift missileers doubled up.
Two missileers were always stationed in “the capsule,” which was essentially a steel tube under 50 feet of reinforced concrete with a sealable air vent at the surface.
The capsule is divided into two sections, with one for machinery and another for working and sleeping. To the immediate right behind the 15-ton reinforced steel door that only opened at the start and end of shifts, a little graffiti left behind by workers offers a glimpse into life below.
Stenciled lettering reads “only 30 minutes out,” a somewhat satirical reminder of the range and efficacy of the ICBMs.
A colored painting shows nose art on a bomber of an American flag-clad duck wielding a hammer decorated with a skull and crossbones who’s chasing down a bear holding a USSR flag above the words “The Jolly Roger Express!”
An otherwise unidentified TSgt. Foster commemorated the facility’s deactivation with a simple message:
“Last man out.”
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