Great Plains (33 page)

Donald E. Green, in
Land of the Underground Rain
(1973), says the aquifer may run dry in twenty to forty years (p. 219).

 

Facts about nuclear missiles I learned from
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Rockets and Missiles,
by Bill Gunston (New York, 1979); from a visit to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1985; and from conversations with Thomas K. Longstreth, Associate Director for Strategic Weapons Policy at the Federation of American Scientists, Washington, D.C.

 

The six Minuteman bases are Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota, Minot AFB in North Dakota, Whiteman AFB in Missouri, F. E. Warren AFB in Wyoming, and Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota. Grand Forks and Whiteman are not on the Great Plains. Malmstrom has 150 Minuteman IIs, which carry one warhead apiece, and 50 Minuteman IIIs, which can carry three warheads apiece. Ellsworth has 150 Minuteman IIs. Minot has 150 Minuteman IIIs. F. E. Warren has 150 Minuteman IIIs, and 50 MX missiles, which can carry up to ten warheads apiece. The total at the Great Plains bases is 300 Minuteman IIs, 350 Minuteman IIIs, and 50 MXs, or about 1,850 warheads.

 

Some of the information about missile installations comes from “This Is an Atomic Missile Base,” by Winthrop Griffith, in
The New York Times Magazine,
May 4, 1969, p. 29.

The sign posted on the fence around the missile silo says:

 

WARNING

RESTRICTED AREA

IT IS UNLAWFUL TO ENTER THIS AREA WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE INSTALLATION COMMANDER
[Section 21, Internal Security Act of 1950; 50 U.S.C. 797].
WHILE ON THIS INSTALLATION ALL PERSONNEL AND THE PROPERTY UNDER THEIR CONTROL ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

 

The details of what happens when you rattle the fence come from Sam Day, of the nuclear-weapons protest group Nukewatch, of Madison, Wisconsin.

 

Information about the missiles and their guidance systems comes from a tour of the missile silo at Malmstrom AFB.

 

The names of three of the Soviet ICBM bases are Uzhur, Aleysk, and Kartaly. They are located along the Siberian Railroad or its spurs in western Siberia.

Kartaly is less than three hundred miles (no great distance, in this part of the world) from the place on the Khirgis Steppe where Mark Alfred Carleton found the Kubanka wheat.

 

The fact that all the Minuteman II missiles at Malmstrom changed to remote targeting in the late summer of '85 is mentioned in an article about the Strategic Air Command in
Air Force
magazine, May 1987, p. 181.

 

Information about missile-launch procedures comes from the tour I took of the Minuteman silo. Additional details come from conversations with former SAC launch officer Bruce Blair, a research associate at the Brookings Institution.

 

I got an idea of the amounts spent on the Minuteman system by reading newspaper accounts of weapons funding back through the years. When the Air Force first announced the “Minute Man” system in 1958, it tried to convince Congress of the system's low cost, and said that for $300 million it could have 1,600 missiles ready to fire (
The New York Times,
February 28, 1958, 1:2). In the following year, it awarded contracts for nearly that much just for research and development (
Times,
March 10, 1959, 8:6; December 24, 1959, 38:3). In 1962, President Kennedy presented a budget with $2.1 billion set aside for Minute-man (
Times,
January 1, 1962, 1:6). The Air Force probably continued to spend in the $2 billion range for Minuteman until it was in place in 1965; total expenditures for missile procurement in '64 and '65 were $3.57 billion and $2.63 billion (
Times,
September 21, 1965, 2:3), of which at least half went for Minuteman. In '65, the Air Force announced that replacing all the Minuteman Is with the more advanced Minuteman IIs would cost $1 billion (
Times,
May 20, 1965, 36:8). In '69, an Assistant Secretary of Defense said that the Minuteman II would actually cost about $7 billion before it was done (
Times,
June 12, 1969, 26:1). Minuteman III was a more advanced system than its forerunners, and did not cost less; according to the
Nuclear Weapons Databook
(p. 119), $12.8 billion was spent on the Minuteman III before 1981. The operating costs of the Minuteman system—the military personnel, vehicles, etc.—are over a third of a billion a year (ibid.). None of the Minuteman estimates includes the costs of developing, building, and testing the warheads, because those figures are classified. $150 billion is just a guess at the amount spent on Minuteman; if anything, it is too low. So much has gone into building, revising, and maintaining the Minuteman missile over the past thirty years that its costs are difficult to overestimate.

Costs having to do with the Peacekeeper, or MX missile, come from the testimony of Under Secretary of Defense Donald A. Hicks before the Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 14, 1986. Costs of the Safeguard Anti-Ballistic Missile system come from an article in the
Times,
November 25, 1975 (1:1), announcing the plans of the Defense Department to abandon the system. (My thanks to Thomas Longstreth for his help on this subject; any errors are mine.)

Figures on the agricultural production of Pondera County, Laramie County, and the other counties on the Great Plains come from the U.S. Census Department's
County and City Data Book, 1983.
To determine which counties are on the Great Plains, I referred to a map published in 1969 by the Great Plains Conservation Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Aberdeen, Earl of

Alexander II, Czar

Allison, Clay

American Fur Co.

American Horse

Apache

Arapaho

Arikara

Assiniboin

Astor, John Jacob

Astor, William B.

Atsina

Audubon, John James

Bailey, Ed

Bailey, F. Lee

Baker, Gerard

Balanchine, George

Barrow, Buck

Barrow, Clyde

Barry, D. F.

Bates, Alvin

Battle of the Little Bighorn

Beckwourth, Jim

Beef Bonanza, The; or, How to Get Rich on the Plains

Bell, J. W.

Bent, Charles and William

Bent's Fort

Berquist, Victor

Billy the Kid

Black Elk

Black Shawl

Blackfeet

Blankenship, Rush

Bodmer, Karl

Bogsti, Henry

Boli, Andrew Edwardson

Boots and Saddles

Bourbonnais

Bowman, Col. Andrew

Bradley, General Luther P.

Brazeau, John

Brazo, John

Brekto, Hans

Bridger, Jim

Brisbin, General James S.

Brown, John

Brown, Russell

Buffalo Chips

Bullhead, Henry

Burke, Charley

Burlington Railroad

Burlington and Missouri

Burns, E. J.

Calamity Jane

Capote, Truman

Carleton, Mark Alfred

Carson, Kit

Carter, Jimmy

Catch the Bear

Catherine the Great

Catlin, George

Cheyenne

Chicago
Tribune

Choate, Bing

Claar, Henry

Claar, Kathleen

Claar, Lawrence

Clark, Lt. William Philo

Clutter, Herb, family

Cody, Buffalo Bill

Colcord, Charlie

Colt, Samuel

Columbia Fur Co.

Comanche

Comanche National Grassland

Como Bluff

Conquering Bear

Cook, James

Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de

Corry, Dick

Cox, “Deacon”

Crazy Horse

Cree

Crook, General George C.

Crow

Crow Dog

Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson

Curse Not His Curls

Custer, Elizabeth

Custer, General George Armstrong

Dalton, Grat

Dart, Isom

Delaware

Desirée

Dickson, Ephriam III

Dill, C. L.

Dixon, Billy

Doreet

Dorman, Isaiah “Teat”

Douglass, J. Harvey

Dutch West India Co.

Eagle on His Journey

Early Peoples of North Dakota

Earp, Wyatt

Ege, Robert J.

Fedge, Oliver

Fetterman, William

Fick, Mr. and Mrs. Earnest

Fire Lame Deer, John

Flatheads

Fontaine, André

Forgaard, Martha

Fort Benton

Fort Berthold

Fort Buford

Fort Griffin

Fort Phil Kearny

Fort Robinson

Fort Union

Frewen, Clara and Moreton

Funkhouser, Gilbert

Garland, Sam

Garnett, William

Garrett, Pat

Gentles, William

Ghost Dance religion

Gilmore, S. J.

Glidden, Joseph

Gnyezdilov (farmer)

Grant, Ulysses, S.

Greasing Hand

Great Northern Railroad

Grimm, Baron von

Grouard, Frank

Gullikson, Gullick

Guthrie, Woody

Gwaltney, Bill

Hague, N.D.

Halling, Ole Olson

Halsey, Jacob

Hamer, Frank

Hamlet, Real

Hardy, Paul

Harris, Edward

Hart, Mollie

Harvey, Alexander

Haugen, Ed

Haugen, Oliver

Hawthorne, Jim

He Dog

Heen, Ole

Helms, C. D.

Hickock, Wild Bill

Hidatsa

Hoffman, Medora von

Holliday, Dr. John Henry

Hollo, Anselm

“Home on the Range”

Homestead Act

Horn, Tom

Hudson, Sadie

Hudson's Bay Company

Hyde, George

Ikard, Bose

In Cold Blood

Ingladson, Ole

Iron Hawk

Irving, Willys

Irwin, James

Jefferson, Thomas

Jenner, Edward

Johnson, Britt

Jumping Bull

Kalispell, Montana

Kansas

Kansas City
Star

Kansas Pacific

Karlsrud, Peter

Kate Big Nose

Kaufman, Clare

Kennedy, Jim

Kennington, Captain

Kicking Bear

Kidder, Lt. Lyman

Kiester, Ward L.

Kiowa

Kiowa Apache

Kirk, Billy

Kirkbride, Alan and Lindi

Kirkbride, Anduin

Koole, Leonard and Arie

Kurz, Rudolph Friedrich

Ladue, Annie

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

“Land That Gives Birth to Freedom, The”

Lang, Mrs. Homer

Larrabee, Nellie

Larson, Martin

Leach, Beecher

Ledyard, John

Lee, Lt. Jesse M.

Lee, Silas

Lewis, Meriwether, and Clark, William

Lie Detector

Lindstedt, Albert

Lindstedt, Olous P.

Little Big Man

Little Wolf

Lockwood, Bertha

Lone Bear

Long Hair

Loving, Frank

McCarty, Henry,
see
Billy the Kid

McGhee sisters

McGillycuddy, Dr. Valentine T.

Mackay, Angus

McKenzie, Kenneth

McKenzie, Owen

McLaughlin, Major James

McSween, Alexander

McTavish, Moses

Mad Man, Harvey

Madison Buffalo Jump State Monument

Mandan

Marsh, Othniel C.

Masterson, Bat

Mather, Dave

Mauck, Buzz

Maud, Walter de S.

Maximilian, Alexander Philipp, Prince

Miami

Michaux, André

Miles, General Nelson

Miniconjou

Miskimmins, Bump

Moir, D.

Mondak

Morès, Marquis de

Morning Telegraph

Moustache, Madame

Murphy

Murrieta, Joaquin

My Life on the Plains

Napew, Manuel

New York Times, The

Nez Percé

Nicodemus

Nixon, Tom

Noon, Bartholomew

Nothing But Gunpowder

Oakley, Annie

Odden, Thorstien

O'Folliard, Tom

Oglala

Olivette

Ollinger, Robert

Olson, Hansena

Omaha

Osage

Otoe

Ours Fou, L'

Palmer, Lizzie

Parker, Bonnie

Parkman, Francis

Patrick, Anne

Pawnee

Pelling, Thyrza Hoe

Person, Emil

Phyllis

Pickett, Bill

Piegan

Pike, Zebulon

Pine Ridge Reservation

Pourier, Baptiste

Pritchard, Mr. and Mrs. Sam

Projects in Wood Furniture

Rankin, Capt. William G.

Read, Rick

Reagan, Ronald

Red Cloud, Chief

Red Cloud Indian Agency

Red Feather

Renner, Fern

Reynolds, Marie Harden

Richardson, Levi

Richthofen, Baron Walter von

Roberson, Avalon

Roberson, Louis

Robinson, Juanita and daughters

Rocking Chair Ranche

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, Theodore

Rosebud Reservation

Rosencrans, Lt. J. Wesley

Rossing, Martin

Royer, R. F.

Running Rabbitt, Thomas

Sacajawea

St. Clair, Dave

St. John, Governor John

St. Peter's