Sharing North Dakota's Cold War History – KVRR Local News

COOPERSTOWN, N.D. (KVRR) — Just outside of Cooperstown, N.D. lies the former site of Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility.

It is now the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site, where travelers can come to get a glimpse of where U.S. soldiers stood ready to launch in case of nuclear war.

Site Supervisor Robert Branting has been working at the site for several years, and this year he received the Heritage Award for a Front-line Tourism Employee at the Governor’s Travel and Tourism awards.

“It’s just an amazing ability to work with great seasonal staff. Have the veterans come through. Have visitors come in from all over the world. I’m very happy to help share that story of our Cold War mission.”

Branting has been sharing stories of the site on social media, as well as collecting oral histories from the veterans that were stationed there.

“They were able to talk to their loved ones down there in the capsules. So I’ve talked to their wives who would say, you know, “I was on the phone with my husband who was working at the console, and all of a sudden I hear the primary alerting system alarm,” and the husband goes “Gotta go.”

On tours of the site, visitors are taken down an elevator to the command center, more than 50 feet below the ground.

Tour guests will see  two consoles where soldiers would have been sitting and turned the keys to launch a missile in the case of a nuclear strike.

Branting says that these histories are an important part of the story of the United States during the cold war.

“It’s very enlightening just to see how folks react and see where the launch keys were that potentially could have ended the lives of millions of people.”

Just to the south of Cooperstown is the November-33 launch facility, where the missiles would have taken off from.

There used to be more facilities like these, but like this one near Hope, N.D. many have been abandoned.

For Branting, who’s father contracted cancer from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, it’s all about sharing the stories about how the history of the Cold War era affected people.

“I remember a woman visited, who lived outside of Moscow, who was basically my age and she was just kind of in awe of all of these machinery here in place to potentially be targeting, you know, Russian installations near her home and I’m sure I’m sure I’d feel the same way over there.“

If you’re interested in taking a tour, you can stop by the Ronald Reagan middleman missile historical site just North of Cooperstown, N.D.