The Geek Atlas

Arizona

083

Titan Missile Museum, Sahuarita, AZ

31° 54′ 10.35″ N 110° 59′ 55.53″ W

“Skybird, this is Dropkick with a red dash alpha message”

The Titan Missile Museum is genuinely unique: it’s the only remaining Titan missile silo, its missile is still in the silo, the museum is run by a former Missile Combat Crew Commander, and all tours involve visiting the missile and the underground control room for a simulated launch.

The museum is about 30 kilometers south of Tucson in the Arizona desert. Everything at the museum is genuine—the silo is the last of 54 Titan missile sites that were dotted around the U.S. The others were destroyed at the end of the Cold War.

On the surface, there’s a small museum of the Cold War, but everything that’s really interesting is underground. After an introductory video, visitors enter the complex through a massive blast door more than 30 centimeters thick. When the silo was in use, this door was kept sealed shut. Everything inside the silo is mounted on springs, so if a Soviet missile were to land nearby, its explosion wouldn’t damage the missile or its controls.

Down in the control room, the equipment looks dated (the missiles were in place from the 1960s to the 1980s) but the double-padlocked red box stenciled ENTRY RESTRICTED TO MCCC AND DMCCC ...