Missile-silo prep two years

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Sunday, October 12, 2003

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It will take two more years to prepare Minuteman Missile National Historic Site for visitors, the site's manager says.

The National Park Service this week named Mark Herberger as superintendent of the decommissioned missile site, which includes a launch-control center and a missile silo — both buried under the prairie about 70 miles east of Rapid City.

Herberger reported for work Monday. "We're looking at being fully operational two years down the road," he said in a telephone interview from his temporary, mobile office at Cactus Flat, near Exit 131 on Interstate 90.

Some visitors might get advance tours, Herberger said, probably in groups and by reservation. Those visits would help test the facility.

The 44th Missile Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City controlled 150 Minuteman II missiles, which were scattered over a huge area of western South Dakota. The missile wing was deactivated in the mid-1990s, and its 15 launch-control facilities and 150 silos were destroyed — except for two. Last year, the Air Force transferred the Delta 1 launch facility and the Delta 9 silo to the National Park Service as memorials to the Cold War.

Herberger will supervise the design and construction of a visitors center and other facilities. "I'm committed to quality services and a quality visitor experience," Herberger said. "Quality takes time."

He will have a number of problems to solve, including how to get visitors into a launch-control capsule buried 31 feet underground. The missile-crew elevator is still there, Herberger said, but its maximum capacity is seven. Visitors likely will not descend into the missile silo, which is at a separate site, Herberger said, but visitors will peer down into the silo, which contains a dummy warhead.

Herberger has worked for the Park Service for 25 years. He is in the agency's "park manager development program," and he will work under Badlands National Park superintendent William Supernaugh.

Herberger previously was park curator at Zion National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument and Pipe Spring National Monument. He first worked for the federal government as a U.S. Forest Service firefighter in Montana.

Herberger grew up in the small farming community of Pendleton, N.Y., near Niagara Falls. (He's no relation to the department store family.)

Contact Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com