Preserving a moment in time and history at the Titan Missile Museum

SAHUARITA, Ariz. (KGUN) — Great thinkers have all said, in their own ways, there is no better teacher than history.

In Green Valley, you can walk through a snapshot in time, when southern Arizona had a crucial role to play in the Cold War; and while there are a few newer things to see, the team of people who keep the museum running find it's important that some things never change.

Standing next to the sliding door, the missile silo goes about 150 deep. Brad Elliott says the 103-missile sitting still and inside is a beast. "This is the only place in the world you could come see this magnitude of a weapon," he said.

Here, on the now museum grounds, you'll find the last of southern Arizona's Titan II missiles. Its nine-megaton nuclear warhead is now on display in the museum lobby.

For a stretch of time, the United States government ran 54 facilities just like this across the country.
Nowadays, the museum staff walk guests through the very same paths and stairs that mission crews did up until 1982. That was as responsibility that Elliott, a marketing mananger for Titan and the Pima Air & Space museums, said he hinds hard to fathom.

"Probably not something I could really even relate to," he said. "The power that was here, is something that I've never had to deal with."

Elliott served as our guide on this visit topside and down below. The silo and its tech are artifacts frozen in time, just as the safety suits and exhibits on display.

KGUN9 and Pat Parris showed us what it was like on our last visit here back in 2020. Present day, there's something newer that visitors can spot: Elliott pointed to the blue crates and boxes that carried the chemical lifeblood of these missiles. "Those are mostly fuel transfer and storage equipment," he said. "It just kind of goes to show what it was like to operate a Titan missile silo."

The highlight of a visit to Titan Missile Museum starts with a descent underground. "When we go down into the silo, you'll be walking back into the (1960s) and going 30 feet underground and seeing what it was like to be at the front lines of the Cold War."

Pass the security checkpoints and 6,000-lb blast doors, and you'll walk into the heart of the facility: the launch command center. "Every single hour of every single day, there was someone here," Elliott said. "(They're) making sure that 1) everything is operating, 2) but also (potentially prepare to) get a call."

Other museum guides will walk guests through that simulated call, pretending to carry that crew member's hypothetical burden.
They have to write down the code, numbers, then find launch keys with cards. And as it would have been back in the Cold War, two crew members would have had to turn the key.

Before going back up to the surface, visitors have a chance to see the rest of the missile's structure and get a real perspective of its size. Elliott said there are still so many lessons to glean here, and a story of real people who kept watch in uncertain times. "There is a real deep connection to the people," he said.