Looking down the Titan II missle silo at the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, Arizona. April 2025.
The Buzz for May 9 2025
In 1960, the U.S. Air Force began constructing 54 launch complexes for the new Titan II missile system. The ICBMs were controlled by three Air Force Bases in the U.S., including Davis-Monthan in Tucson.
During the life of the program, 18 missile silos, control rooms, and sets of living quarters surrounded Tucson. All but one were destroyed to fulfill a treaty with the Soviet Union. The one remaining facility is the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley.
VIEW LARGER Looking up the missile silo at the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, Arizona. April 2025 “You might be attracted by that thought of experiencing what a silo would feel like, and then get this crazy Cold War history lesson that's harrowing and kind of ingenious at the same time,” the museum’s Brad Elliot explained to us on a tour of the silo.
VIEW LARGER The flame deflectors at the bottom of the missile silo at the Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley, Arizona. April 2025 The silo, control room, quarters, and a de-weaponized missile at the museum have all been restored for the public to see. But what happened to the 17 other sites in Southern Arizona?
They were all decommissioned to comply with the treaty meaning they were filled in and parts of them were dynamited. Two of them are on federal property, sitting within the boundaries of the Ironwood National Monument and the Coronado National Forest.
Others are on land owned by Pima County, but most are privately owned. Some of the owners are happy to talk about their silo while others prefer to keep quiet.
Thirty minutes north of Tucson in Catalina, the members of Vista de la Montaña United Methodist Church gather each week to worship. The property is one of the missile sites.
“Reverend Cook came, looked at the property, fell in love with the fact that it was a Titan missile site, and he's the one that came up with once a missile site, now a church with a mission, and they all turned swords into plowshares,” explained church member Nancy Yob.
VIEW LARGER The sanctuary at Vista de la Montaña United Methodist Church in Catalina, Arizona sits at the edge of a Titan II missle silo. April 2025. The church parking lot next to the sanctuary sits over the silo and the Sun Wheel covers where the antennas were located. Only the water well is still visible, giving a hint to what lies beneath.
VIEW LARGER The Sun Wheel at Vista de la Montaña United Methodist Church in Catalina, Arizona, sits over the antennas from a Titan II missile launch complex. April 2025. “This is where we needed to be. And he just had such an excitement about him over this property and how much it meant to build it up as a church, not something of destruction,” Yob said.
The next silo we visited is to the south and west of the church on the outskirts of Oro Valley. Once again, if you don’t know it is there, you will drive by. And likely the customers of Acacia Nursery have no idea as they shop for plants, they are walking across history.
VIEW LARGER The door to the Titan II missile launch complex under Acacia Nursery in Oro Valley, Arizona. April 2025 Sitting quietly on top of a rise at the nursery is a metal door that is flush with the ground. But hit the hydraulics button and the door swings open into the excavated missile complex.
“It's just a commercial scissor lift, but it goes up 46 feet,” explained Acacia owner Doug Sanders as we headed underground.
Doug’s complex is not so well preserved as the museum in Green Valley, but there is no escaping the feeling of history.
VIEW LARGER Cold War era equipment in the Titan II missile launch complex under Acacia Nursery in Oro Valley, Arizona. April 2025 “So this is the former command center. This is the whole building here. It's three stories. The floors are all floating on these massive springs you see over here; everything of value was taken. The military took all the equipment out, and then they had salvagers come in and took all the wires out of the conduits and copper and everything else. And then to make sure that the site could never be used again, they took sledgehammers and they smashed all the cabinetry and stuff. So, there was really nothing of value in here, so it was all cut out and removed,” Sanders explained.
He also takes people on tours from time to time and even hosted the Boy Scouts who “camped” in the domed top of the crew quarters.
“It kind of looks like a theater or a planetarium or something. I've had movies up here. We've taken projectors and done large screen on the dome. I've had 40 Boy Scouts and sleeping bags, eating popcorn, watching the movie War Games. It was an introduction to them as to what this what that whole world was all about,” he said.
His restoration proceeds in fits and starts, but the long-term plan is to build a house over the launch complex and make it his basement.
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