Pads with tail launchers located near Green River, Utah about 470 miles
from impact point at White Sands. FPS-16 radars position first and second stage
burning and Launch site is equipped with destruct command capability because
vehicle flies over some sparsely-populated areas.
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It wasn’t until last year, on some obscure travel web site
that I came across mention of a friend of a friend of hikers or bikers or
climbers around Moab who knew where old missile pieces lay buried in the Canyonland’s
sand. What?! I spend time around there.
My brother now lives outside Moab. Why had I never heard about
this? From 1963 until 1975 the military
test site launched 448 Athena and Pershing missiles were fired across South
Eastern Utah en route to New Mexico. A
friend who ranches just beyond Newspaper Rock recalls being paid $2,000 dollars
a year to evacuate on launch nights. The
un-armed missiles did carry small amounts of radio-active material in their
noses in order to test the spread of radioactivity on impact. Now, on I 70,
just east of exit 164, look to the East, up along the shale bluffs, and the
remnants of buildings and launch towers line the ridge. Across the interstate are the huge missile
storage and assembly buildings. Now I 70 bisects the 15,500 acre Utah Launch
Complex, but it had not yet been constructed in 1963. I-70 is a story for
another day.