For over thirty years, around 1,000 missile silos dotted the landscape of the Great Plains states. Minuteman Missile NHS remembers the Cold War, especially the arms race that took place. It is located near one of the launch facilities and missile silos.

In the small visitor center, there is a 30-minute film about the build-up of nuclear weapons by the U.S. and Soviet Union. The movie discusses those few times in both countries when the failsafe failed and possible war was only avoided by someone not following orders.

A timeline-based exhibit covers growth of arsenals by both sides, followed by the reduction of both in the 1990s.

A few miles west, another part of the park contains the actual control room. Tours require advanced tickets, so we just gawked at the outside. The control room was at the center of a spoked wheel of communication lines - 10 of them - each leading several miles to an actual missile silo. The missiles were so dispersed to reduce the chance of all being destroyed before they could be launched.

Another few miles west brought us to the third component of the park - an actual silo. The top had been replaced with a glass dome, allowing people to stare down into the silo, where a missile (unarmed) sits to this day.