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Along Highway 46, on the west side of Lamoure, North
Dakota, stands a striking monument to our Cold War heritage—a Minuteman
I missile, typical of the many deployed across the region in the early
1960s. It was erected in a city park on June 28, 1968. By that time the
Minuteman I already was being supplanted by Minuteman II and Minuteman
III. History moved fast during the Cold War, and so the decommissioned
Minuteman I was made available as a monument, courtesy of U.S. Senator
Milton Young.
One of our students, Cassie Ptacek, who hails from Oakes, has produced
a fine paper about the placement of the Minuteman Missile Monument at
Lamoure. You may wonder, since the Cold War is supposed to have been a
time of fear and trauma, why would people raise a monument to nuclear
weapons, mutually assured destruction, and all that? One of our PhD students,
Dave Mills, who is writing a dissertation about the Cold War on the northern
plains, offers an answer. It seems people in this region were not all
that traumatized. They routinely farmed around missile silos and went
about their business—part of that business, of course, being the
harvest of profit from the defense establishment brought to the northern
plains as a result of the Cold War.
Senator Young, who was born on a farm near Lamoure, was key to the political
process of bringing defense facilities to his home state. He was even
better known for his assiduous attention to farm policy, which earned
him the nickname, “Mr. Wheat.” So the monument at Lamoure carries
a bit of a mixed message. The missile invokes military might, while an
interpretive plaque recalls what Young accomplished for farmers.
This is one of those monuments that invites interpretation and reinterpretation.
Originally the dedication program called the missile both “a safeguard
to our nation” and also “a symbol of freedom.” Symbols
of freedom were commonplaces in Cold War monument-making. During this
time the Boy Scouts, assisted by Lions Clubs, were erecting replicas of
the Statue of Liberty across the United States. Meanwhile, Eagles clubs
were placing stone tablets commemorating the Ten Commandments in public
places. Cold War monuments projected an image of the United States as
free, godly, and strong in the face of godless, totalitarian communism.
For some years after the dedication of the missile monument, the town
celebrated Missile City Days as a summer festival. The “Mr. Wheat”
plaque dedicated to Senator Young was added in 1970. Nevertheless, as
Ptacek notes, “The missile, so important to this small town at its
dedication, slowly lost its significance during the following years. .
. . One night in the fall of 2001, the missile was taken down.”
Stories differ as to just why this happened. One has it that a nearby
nursing home needed the space for expansion. Another allows that the missile
had fallen into paint-peeling disrepair and become an eyesore, so the
city took it down.
In 2003 a missile restoration movement of local citizens spearheaded by
the daughter of Senator Young raised funds to bring back the monument.
Not everyone in town was enthusiastic about this, and the missile needed
repair, but the refurbishment proceeded, and the site along the highway,
outside of town, alongside an old James River paddleboat, was settled
upon. The rededication took place on July 16, 2005.
Just what the monument celebrates remains fuzzy, but that’s the way
with many monuments. Ptacek argues that it now holds commemorative consequence
for the whole Cold War generation of Americans, not just the people of
Lamoure. You can go right up and touch it. It’s a Baby-Boomer photo
opportunity.
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