Missile Museum Sparks Cold War Memories
This Titan II missile is the last of its kind. It stands 103 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter. The launch silo is almost 150 feet deep.
This Titan II missile is the last of its kind. It stands 103 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter. The launch silo is almost 150 feet deep.
Road Rules: Attractions Worth a Pit Stop
The Titan Missile Museum tops the list of the 10 best roadside attractions in America from the editors of Roadside America. Find out what other roadside curiosities are recommended by the experts.
One of two keys used to launch Titan II. The keys had to be turned within two seconds of each other and for a total of five seconds in order to start the launch sequence.
One of two keys used to launch Titan II. The keys had to be turned within two seconds of each other and for a total of five seconds in order to start the launch sequence.
Construction of this site took 29 months and required more than 7,200 cubic yards of concrete and 2,200 tons of steel. The 18 sites in Tucson took the effort of 5,000 people, laboring 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. They got Christmas day off.
The Titan Missile Museum's new education and research center opened in 2004.
Twenty-five years ago, a missile silo south of Tucson was one of the most top-secret places in America. At the height of the Cold War, it was part of a network of nuclear warheads designed to avert a nuclear attack. The silo housed the Titan 2 Missile, which could be launched in less than a minute from its position 150 feet beneath the Sonoran Desert.
The missile was never launched. And the site is now a National Historic Landmark that hosts a museum dedicated to the Titan 2 Missile.
Yvonne Morris led a crew in the 1980s that was trained to respond to launch orders that they hoped would never come.
"If you're being ordered to take your keys out and get ready to launch your missile, life as you know it is pretty much over," Morris says. "So in essence, you have nothing to lose."
Morris is now the director of the museum where the Titan 2 still rests in its silo. It's the last of 54 such missiles that were clustered in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. The rest have been destroyed. The Command Post deep inside the ground is like something from a sci-fi movie. Mint green metal panels are full of blinking lights, large switches, dials, and meters.
The missile site evokes strong memories for museum visitors like Rosemary Mancillas, who reflects on when she was in grade school.
"I get kind of a creepy, crawly feeling all over to think back on that time," she says. "We all grew up during that time of duck and cover. I remember as a child thinking we were being invaded by Russians, and we were all going to die."
Joel Sarich, a visitor from East Lake, looks at the missile and remembers a speech given by President Kennedy in October 1962.
"I can remember vividly sitting in front of the television and seeing John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis and thinking just maybe that was going to be the end. And I know there were neighbor kids who were much younger than I, who were very frightened and didn't sleep that night because they figured we were all going to be goners," Sarich says.
A few days after President Kennedy delivered the speech, the Russian missile facility in Cuba was dismantled. But it would be more than 20 years before the Cold War ended. Visiting the site, Sarich ays the the threats we face today are much different than they were back then.
"The enemy isn't well defined and neither are their actions as well defined. At least between us and the Soviet Union, there seemed to be this mutual respect for life."
But not everyone remembers the Cold War tension. Morris is now trying to raise money to help educate people who weren't alive at the time. In addition to tours and gift shop memorabilia, museum-goers can pay $500 spend the night in this once top-secret missile silo. For $1,000, people can sleep in the crew quarters, play war games at the commander's console, launch an imaginary missile and enjoy a catered dinner.
Morris says these options are just a way of bringing the period alive for visitors. She can't think of any other way to do that effectively — short of creating a Titan II video game.
America's Best (and Strangest) Roadside Museums
Vent Haven Ventriloquist Museum rooms display crowds of retired ventriloquist dummies.
Web Resources
It crashed right here: USS Shenandoah Disaster Museum owners Theresa and Bryan Rayner show a model of the airship outside their trailer/museum.
Take a long road trip, and you're sure to see signs for the world's largest ball of string or the world's smallest dictionary or the world's creepiest shrunken head. The interstates and dirt roads of America are teeming with roadside curiosities, so it can be hard to know which attractions warrant pulling over the car. That's why we've asked the aficionados of America's roadside attractions to offer their top 10 favorite roadside museums. From the Toilet Seat Museum in Texas to the Dan Quayle Vice-Presidential Museum in Indiana, these experts know how to spice up a good road trip.
Doug Kirby is the editor of RoadsideAmerica, a comprehensive web guide that features over 8,000 uniquely odd museums, monuments and tourist traps that enliven the U.S. tourism landscape.
Brian and Sarah Butko are the co-authors of Roadside Giants and Roadside Attractions: Cool Cafés, Souvenir Stands, Route 66 Relics, and Other Road Trip Fun.
Doug Kirby's Top 10:
Green Valley, Ariz.
Cold War thrills are guaranteed in a preserved nuclear missile bunker, where you get to turn the launch key, World War III-style!
2. Dan Quayle Vice Presidential Museum
Huntington, Ind.
The only museum solely devoted to a living, former vice president (the museum's slogan is "Second to One") includes an exhibit room devoted to other presidential sidekicks.
3. Vent Haven Ventriloquist Dummy Museum
Ft. Mitchell, Ky.
Do ventriloquist dummies give you the heebie-jeebies? Then tell yourself, "They're not creepy, they're cute
they're not creepy, they're cute..." before you visit this place, exhibiting room after room of retired dummies.
4. Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum
Gibsland, La.
This museum is in the cafe where the doomed road trippers bought their last snack. The star exhibit is the bullet-riddled V-8 Ford (only, it's the one they drove in the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde movie).
5. Ed's Museum
Wykoff, Minn.
Don't let the simple name fool you. Ed Krueger ran the general store in this tiny town, and never threw away anything. Including his dead cat. After Ed died, the ladies of Wykoff stormed in, neatened up, and opened Ed's Museum, a hodgepodge of oatmeal tins, Hollywood pinups, player piano rolls, decades of junk mail, and every TV Guide from 1954 through 1989.
Las Vegas, Nev.
"Lee" Liberace left the earthly stage 20 years ago, but fans still flock to the world's most flamboyant museum, dedicated to the world's most flamboyant entertainer, in the world's most flamboyant city. Don't miss the museum's Hope Diamond — The World's Largest Rhinestone!
7. Shenandoah Airship Disaster Museum
Ava , Oh.
Before the Hindenburg, there was... the Shenandoah. The 1925 crash of this dirigible was just as horrible, falling in pieces in a remote corner of Ohio. Each fragment crash site is marked and the whole story is told in a trailer converted into a mobile museum.
Philadelphia, Pa.
This museum is a stately-yet-fun medical collection of human pathology, so dignified that you almost forget that you're looking at skulls, conjoined twin body parts and a giant colon.
9. National Museum of Funeral History
Houston, Texas.
"Death Be Not Unprofessional" could be the motto of this impressive collection of fancy hearses, designer caskets and other relics of the funeral industry.
San Antonio, Texas.
For over 30 years Barney Smith, a master plumber, has turned toilet seats into works of personal vision and art. He works and displays in his garage, and he loves visitors.
Brian and Sarah Butko's Top 10:
North Platte, Neb.
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show may no longer be touring, but you can still watch the show here — in miniature form. 20,000 hand-carved pieces come to life every half hour. The very hospitable Henline family owns this museum, which also has an amazing collection of Western memorabilia, tons of crazy souvenirs and a fun play area for the kids.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Signs have defined American culture for more than a century, and you'll find thousands of them here in all their glory, from gold leaf stenciled on glass to backlit clocks to neon spectaculars. Founder Tod Swormstedt served as publisher and editor of Signs of the Times magazine, which has documented the sign industry since 1906.
3. Stewart's Petrified Wood Shop
Holbrook, Ariz.
You know you've found a good roadside attraction when mannequin-chomping dinosaurs line the approach drive. You can ogle (and buy) all kinds of minerals and gems at Stewart's, dig around their pile of geodes to find a souvenir to take home and crack open, or feed their ever-hungry ostriches.
4. The Big Duck
Flanders, N.Y.
In 1931 Martin Maurer built a giant 20-foot tall concrete duck and sold duck eggs in a shop in its belly. The duck has migrated a few times since then. But tourists looking for duck-themed souvenirs can find them here.
Morrison, Colo.
The Fort is a living replica of Bent's Fort, Colorado's first trading post, which opened in 1833. Support beams and 80,000 adobe bricks were produced on site. Even the floors were made from the traditional mix of earth and ox blood. In one of nine dining rooms, you can dine on authentic dishes such as elk, quail and bison marrow bones.
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
A tiki restaurant is hardly a museum, but this is one of the few tiki restaurants that survived since the peak of their popularity decades ago. The Mai-Kai has been in the same family since opening in 1956. Not only does it have all the tropical touches and artifacts, it also has outdoor gardens and a dazzling 45-minute revue performed twice nightly by native Polynesian dancers.
7. Harland Sanders Café and Museum
Corbin, Ky.
Colonel Harland Sanders lives on in KFC commercials — and in this museum. His vast fast-food chicken empire began here, so it's only fitting that this is where visitors can come to find a recreation of Sanders' kitchen, his "modest motel room," which was used to lure tired diners to stay overnight, and KFC artifacts including a barrel of the Colonel's secret-recipe mixture. So bring a bucket of chicken and start dipping.
Lucas, Kan.
From the devil to Adam and Eve, S.P. Dinsmoor crafted cement sculptures of numerous Biblical characters. He also used cement to create trees, animal cages and a three-story, log cabin-shaped mausoleum, where you can glimpse Dinsmoor resting in his glass-lid coffin made of cement, of course.
Long Beach, Wash.
Overflowing with oddities, Marsh's offers thrills, chills and nervous giggles as you browse their collection of shrunken heads, exotic mounted animals, sea shells, antique music players, and Jake the Alligator Man (an alligator-man hybrid).
10. Roadside America
Shartlesville, Pa.
This vintage wonderland of 300 miniature buildings and 4,000 figures sits among running O-gauge trains and trolleys. Founder Lawrence Gieringer died in 1963, but the displays have remained the same, creating a time-warp to pre-Interstate America.
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