The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site Is Absolutely Worth A Stop On A Trip To South Dakota
I find that sometimes smaller monuments, parks, and museums are often my favorite. You might think that there isn’t enough there to capture the kids’ interest but actually because the subject matter is often so focused, they focus better.
That isn’t to say that the Louvre isn’t great, but often times they remember only how big it was and not anything about, you know, art. Same thing with national parks sometimes- there is so much to see (and so many fellow humans also trying to see it) that it can be too much to ingest. But sometimes the bite-sized sites are easier to digest (really wearing out that food metaphor there).
The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is one of those great smaller sites among the 423 areas in the National Park System. Focused on telling the story of the Minuteman Missiles and their importance in the Cold War, this historic site was a hit with both the kids and the adults in our family and we learned a lot in our short time. It was an awesome stop for us on our weeklong trip around the Dakotas.
Why You Should Stop Here
The kids found the Minuteman missile story and the idea of hundreds of nuclear warheads below farmland fascinating. And I thought the museum setup was a great combo of exploring the exhibits and viewing the film in the Visitor Center with actually seeing the sites in person. This is one of only two places in America where you can see a Cold War era missile silo according to the NPS website.
And all of it is easily reachable from the interstate between Rapid City and Badlands National Park. Interesting and easy to get to? Sign me up!
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So What Is The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site?
From the mid 1960s thru the early 1990s, there were 1000 Minuteman Missile Silos and a 100 Launch Control Facilities in the Great Plains (specifically the Dakotas, Montana, Missouri, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska). Several of the six missile wings have since been deactivated, including this area, which was deactivated in 1993.
(There were other ICBM- InterContinental Ballistic Missiles- sites in the Great Plains, including for Atlas, Titan, and the interestingly named Peacekeeper missiles, but Minuteman missiles were the most common.)
The kids were impressed by the technology behind the Minuteman Missiles-- they could reach speeds of over 15,000 miles per hour, reaching the USSR in just 30 minutes from here. Also, each Minuteman’s 1.2 megaton warhead was 60 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I found it impressive and scary at the same time.
The amount of manpower it took to maintain 24- 7 vigilance 365 days a year was huge. It wasn’t just manning the launch stations; it included maintaining all the electronics, the miles of electrical cables underground connecting silos to the launch controls, the silos themselves, the launch control facilities, and the roads to everything. And you also had to feed and house the technicians, security teams, and the missileers, which was the name for the officers trained to operate the Minuteman (which immediately made me picture some sort of bizarre, dark universe Mouseketeer). So there were a lot of people involved.
The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site aims to tell the story about all of this- the missiles themselves, why they were considered imperative in keeping the peace during the Cold War, and about all of the people involved, not just the crew members that had their finger on the button. (Although considering the realities of that responsibility obviously made that job the most important one in the kids’ eyes, the cook’s role in all this was less impressive to them.)
I personally found the locals’s stories some of the most interesting -- the kids that grew up with the missiles on their farmland and having that be a daily fact of life. The audio tour and the park film have snippets of the locals’ first hand accounts of their experiences which I thought were a great addition.
Map showing the 3 parts of the Minuteman National Historic Site. Map courtesy of the NPS.
The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site was designated in 1999 and consists of 3 separate sites, near each other along Interstate 90 between Rapid City and Badlands National Park in western South Dakota. The 3 parts to the Minuteman National Historic Site are:
Visitor Center- exhibits and a park film
Delta- 01 Launch Control Facility- the building where the launch control staff lived while on duty plus the underground launch control bunker. To see beyond the gate, you need tickets for a ranger guided tour.
Delta- 09 Missile Silo- an actual missile silo housing an unarmed Minuteman missile that has been outfitted with a glass top.
You can do the sites in any order although the NPS recommends that you start at the Visitor Center. Because we were coming from Rapid City, we started at Delta-09 and ended at the Visitor Center and felt that it was fine to do it in reverse order.
How Long Does It Take To Visit Minuteman Missile National Historic Site?
To do everything- minimum 3 hours: If you visit all 3 parts, go on the 45 minute ranger led tour of Delta 01 Launch Control Facility, take your time to watch the whole park film at the Visitor Center, and listen to all the stops on the audio tour, it will probably take you 3- 4 hours.
To see all 3 stops briefly- 1 hour: You could stop briefly at the Visitor Center and see some exhibits but not watch the park film, then drive on to Delta- 01 which is 6 minutes away from the Visitor Center. Look at Delta-01 from the gate, then drive to Delta-09 which is 15 min from Delta-01. Read the signs here and walk out to the missile silo. You can listen to parts of the audio tour while at Delta-01 and Delta-09 and catch up on the other parts while back in the car driving. If you keep an eye on your time and don’t spend too long at any one site, you could be done in about an hour or so.
If you don’t have much time at all: See the Delta-09 Missile Silo and listen to the audio tour in the car driving to wherever you are going next. You could do the stop in under 30 minutes and listen to as much or as little of the audio tour as you want.
Looking down into the missile silo itself at Delta-09. I think the thing that impressed me the most was the absolutely massive size of the 90 ton blast door that would have covered the silo but is partially rolled back now. But actually seeing the silo buried out in the middle of farmland with a world-ending missile inside is what I think is the most important part of the whole Minuteman Missile site. If you don’t do anything else, stop and see this.
What We Did On Our Visit- The Details
We were driving from the Rapid City Airport to Badlands National Park and decided to see the Minuteman on the way. Since we were coming from the west (meaning we were driving east on I90) we stopped at Delta-09 Missile Silo first because we passed that site first. We left the airport at 11:15 am and were pulling into the parking area for Delta-09 at 11:59 am.
Stop #1- Delta 09 Missile Silo
The Delta-09 Missile Silo is not far off of exit 116 /239th street from interstate 90. There is nothing else around here except the NPS sign telling you which way to turn at the stop sign off the exit to get to Delta-09. Right after you turn, you pass over a cattle grate and the paved roads ends. You only have to drive about 0.5 miles on this very flat and well maintained dirt road to get to the missile silo so it shouldn’t be a problem. It just reminds you how out in the middle of nowhere the government put these silos.
You can see the parking area and the silo before you get to it (it is super flat here) but the NPS put up some large signs just in case.
The parking area, vault bathrooms, and small covered, information kiosk look relatively new. Once you have read the little bit about the Delta 09 site, you can walk the short distance out to the silo itself which is surrounded by a barbed wire fence.
*Pro-Tip* You are going to want to use the cell phone audio tour. It was actually super interesting, to the point that the kids wanted to continue listening to it even after we got back in the car. The tour has numbered stops at the Delta-09 silo and at the Delta-01 Launch Facility that are narrated by former missileers, telling about the history and their life here. You can go to the audio tours tab on the NPS website or go to the mobile webpage on your smartphone. Either way is fine, just that the mobile page was a bit easier to navigate on a smartphone.
The kids spent a lot longer than I thought they would going to each numbered stop and listening to the narration. We ended up spending about 40 minutes here, although some of that was just organizing 7 people through bathroom breaks and snacks and sunscreen application (no shade at all here, bad news in a family of redheads!)
You can’t miss the entrance to the Delta-09 missile silo site. And yes, that is a dirt road you take to get to it.
There is a short walk from the parking area out to the missile silo at Delta-09. And as you can see, absolutely no shade, hence the sunscreen for the red- haired and pale-skinned members of our family.
The audio tour has stops for each thing you see in the picture- the big silo itself, the small cone-shaped UHF antenna on the right designed to survive a nearby nuclear detonation, the tall white pole that was a motion detector security system, the personnel access hatch, etc. There was way more here than I would have known to look at if we hadn’t had the cell phone audio tour. There is a sign in the corner that labels everything but it doesn’t tell you nearly as much as the audio tour did.
Stop # 2- Delta 01 Launch Control Facility
Okay so Delta-01 Launch Control Facility is where I suffered my first major disappointment on our Dakotas trip because I found out they were doing maintenance on the facility and were not giving tours of the topside building and the underground bunker at the time we were there. Wah wah waah.
But we could still go up to the gate outside and listen to the cell phone tour which was interesting and worth doing. I was super bummed not to go down to the underground launch control bunker and see the launch keys made famous in War Games. “Turn your KEY, Sir!” (We made the kids watch the movie as pre-trip research. For a movie released in 1983, it has held up surprisingly well although the thought of connecting to the internet by physically placing a telephone receiver on a modem blew their minds. It was hilarious to watch them try and figure out what was happening there. At least watch the first 10 minutes on YouTube so you can see the launch control facility in action. Anyway, enough about War Games.)
My day was somewhat salvaged by the great rangers at the Visitor Center who gave us a guided walk through of the Virtual Tour that’s available on the mobile site mentioned above. They put it up on a big screen and talked you through the whole site. So it was kinda like we got the guided tour and was definitely better than nothing. But it is still on my list to do the tour in person on my next visit.
Like Delta-09, it was easy to get to Delta-01. Take exit 127 from I90, and then follow the signs to go north of the interstate less than a mile. You can see the building from the interstate, being all flat here and not much else around. I find it so cool coming from a mountainous place myself.
The building itself is so nondescript, considering it was vital to national security. Just a beigey one story house surrounded by lots of barbed wire. We spent only about 15 minutes here looking at everything and then listened to some of the stops from the audio tour while in the car driving onto the Visitor Center. It was hot outside despite being early October. (It snowed the week after we left so go I guess that’s life on the Plains.)
The very plain exterior of the Delta-01 Launch Control facility belies the crazy important stuff going on below ground here. I guess all the barbed wire kinda gives you a clue that not all is as it seems. Photo courtesy of the NPS.
NPS graphic showing the underground facilities the Minuteman Missile Site. Just goes to show how much was hiding out beneath nondescript exteriors.
I am so bummed I did not get to see this in person. Love the dark humor of the missileers though. Wonder if Domino’s knows about this blatant copyright infringement? Photo courtesy of the NPS.
Stop #3- Visitor Center
We ended up at the Visitor Center last which seemed odd because that’s usually where you start but honestly, it was fine. It is a nice, although small, building and looks to be fairly new.
We watched the park film “Beneath The Plains: The Minuteman Missile On Alert” which was way better than most national park films I have watched but it is 30 min long. The kids watched the whole thing so that means it was pretty interesting. Then we sat through the ranger guided virtual tour of Delta-01 which was great as well but it meant that by the time that was finished, the kids had done a lot of sitting and were kinda done. So I didn’t get to explore the small exhibit sections as much as I might have wanted but what I saw was interesting.
The Visitor Center has nice flush bathrooms and a little bookstore, plus a water fountain.
The exterior of the Visitor Center at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.
An exhibit in the Visitor Center shows the buildup of nuclear warheads worldwide in the Cold War. It is truly astounding how many there were at the peak, and even today.
Need To Know Details
Opening Hours
Look at the website before you go as the days that are opened/closed change throughout the year.
The Visitor Center is open 8am-4pm most of the time throughout the year but it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays when we were there in October. And according to the website, it is closed on Sundays and Mondays in the winter. Not sure about summer and spring.
The Delta 01- and Delta-09 sites are generally open from 9-3pm throughout the year but are usually closed on the same days of the week as the Visitor Center. You can always drive to the parking areas though and look through the fence.
All 3 parts of the Minuteman Missile National are closed on federal holidays except for 4th of July and Veterans Day.
Cost
It is free to visit all the sites. The only thing that costs money is if you take a guided ranger tour of Delta-01 Launch Control Facility.
Delta-01 Launch Facility Tours
You must have a reservation to go on the 45 minute tour. Only 6 people are allowed on the tour at a time.
You can book up to 3 months in advance and in the summer, tours can fill up 2 months ahead of time so go ahead and book as soon as you can. You can book online or by phone. Be sure to check the NPS website for current details, including physical requirements necessary for the tour- i.e. climbing a ladder if the elevator breaks.
Tour Prices:
$12.00 - Adults ages 17 & over
$8.00 - Kids ages 6-16.
Nearest Food
Just south of the Visitor Center, on the road heading towards Badlands National Park is a big convenience store called Badlands Trading Post that had all the kitsch you could possibly want, plus hot dogs, ice cream, and the usual gas station snacks.
If you are doing the visit in the normal way, i.e. Visitor Center to Delta-01 to Delta-09, then keep driving 10 more minutes on I90 going from Delta-09 to Wall and stop at the world famous Wall Drug. There’s a cafeteria style restaurant and an Ice Cream Soda Shop plus a maze of shops to peruse. We found it a bit overwhelming to find our way around and a bit underwhelming in terms of food (the line for the cafeteria was long) but people seem to love it. If all else fails, Wall also has a Dairy Queen and a Subway if you need to feed kids in a hurry.
Places To Stay Near Minuteman Missile National Historic Site
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There isn’t a huge amount of choice near the missile sites as this is a pretty sparsely developed area. There are probably more campgrounds/RV parks around here than hotels so that could be an option.
Wall
Wall is your nearest town but it is quite small and has mostly budget hotels. The Best Western Plains Motel in Wall is your best bet there out of the meager hotel offerings. Or try the Badlands Frontier Cabins, a cute little resort of cabins right off the interstate. They don’t have much of a view but there is a kids playground in the middle and you do get a hair more privacy than a hotel room.
If you are looking for camping then you should try one of the best boondocking sites I have ever seen. You can find it on Google Maps as Badlands Boondocking Area and it is right by the Badlands Pinnacles Entrance Station. No bathrooms or any amenities of any kind besides a dirt road right along the cliffs of the Badlands and epic views. It can get a little busy in the middle of summer so go early. According to reviews, it might be too windy for a tent sometimes as well.
Badlands National Park
Cedar Pass Lodge Is Amazing
My number one choice for lodging near Minuteman National Historic Site is the cabins at the Cedar Pass Lodge in nearby Badlands National Park. The lodge is only 20 minutes south of the Minuteman Missile Visitor Center.
We spent the night there after visiting the Minuteman Missile National Historic Area and it was perfect for us. We had 2 of the 2 Queen cabins for our group of 7 and the sunset and sunrise views alone were worth the stay. Plus, the cabins are new, spacious, and better than most national park lodgings I have stayed in. And you are so close to trailheads. I really liked this place and I would rearrange your itinerary if you can to get an available night.
The Cedar Pass restaurant next door was meh- we had the Indian tacos and they were huge and filling but nothing I would write home about. Get the order to go and enjoy them on the picnic tables behind your cabin which was way better than the kinda dinky restaurant. (And split them between people, I don’t think anyone in our group actually finished one by themselves.)
The rooms had fridges so get breakfast foods at the Badlands Trading Post on your way in or the restaurant serves breakfast too. We brought yogurt, pastries, and granola bars with us and ate breakfast outside, enjoying the sunrise. The rooms also have microwaves and single serving coffee makers.
The Cedar Pass Gift Shop is attached to the restaurant and had a decent amount of food and camping supplies as well as your typical national park swag. You could get some snacks here too.
This is part of the view from behind the cabins at Cedar Pass Lodge. Not bad eh?
Click on images below to enlarge
Rapid City
Rapid City is less than an hour away and makes a great base for exploring the area. We stayed there for several nights while exploring the awesome Black Hills, after visiting the Badlands. There is so much to do within 60 minutes of Rapid City- Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, biking the Mickelson Trail, and hiking in Custer State Park.
Both of the hotels we stayed at were near each other at exit 61 off I90, just 10 min west of downtown Rapid City. There is a large and popular indoor water park, Watiki Indoor Waterpark Resort, at this exit and there are 5 hotels from major chains within walking distance of it. These hotels had the best prices in Rapid City, I guess because of the competition.
Residence Inn Rapid City. We spent 2 nights here in this relatively new and well run hotel and I would stay again. I always like a Residence Inn on a trip because of the full kitchens, which make preparing lunches for the road and snacks at night so much easier. Plus, the rooms tend to be quite spacious and have sleeper sofas, always helpful when kids don’t want to share with their siblings. They even have 2 BR suites so it is almost like an Airbnb. Included breakfast is always a winner for us and this one had lots of choices.
Fairfield Inn & Suites by Mariott Rapid City. We spent one night here and it was fine. I didn’t like it quite as much as the Residence Inn but that could have been because it was way busier when we were there, with lots of families and small children obviously coming for the waterpark. But the room was fine and I would stay there again although being attached to the waterpark wasn’t a plus for me although if we had younger kids with us, it might have been. Breakfast also included here.
If you want to stay in Rapid City’s cute and interesting downtown, with its good restaurants and shops all in a walkable couple of blocks area, then I would stay at the historic Hotel Alex Johnson. It looked very cool when we walked by, with a unique kinda Gothic Bavarianish lobby but has modern up to date rooms. Plus, a rooftop deck under the iconic neon sign that’s a landmark for downtown. This hotel is at the top of my list for next time we come.
*If you do go to downtown Rapid City, we really enjoyed the Firehouse Brewing Company (we went twice actually because we liked it so much) and Sabatino’s Italian Ristorante was an excellent meal for a little fancier choice than Firehouse.
Final Thoughts
Basically I thought everything about the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site was interesting. Maybe because I grew up in the Cold War so this is history from my lifetime. Maybe because I find the dichotomy of world ending missiles lying quietly beneath farmland fascinating. But I wasn’t the only one- the kids really enjoyed it as well. It is well worth a stop if you are in this part of South Dakota, you could easily do it on your way to or from Badlands National Park.
More Blogs About South Dakota
This 6 day itinerary includes a complete itinerary for 6 days in South Dakota visiting Wind Cave National Park, hiking Black Elk Peak in Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore, biking the Mickelson Trail, Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and of course Badlands National Park.