Mereja

Author: Henry and Dylan

  • Titan Missile Museum

    Image of Titan Missile Museum located in East Sahuarita, Arizona, US

    Titan Missile Museum

    America’s only nuclear missile silo open to the public

    The only megaton missile silo from the Cold War that is open to the public, the Titan Missile Museum offers a unique experience. It is located in the hot Arizona desert — a bleak setting that feels appropriate for a nuclear missile silo — and was the largest nuclear missile silo in the continental United States until it was decommissioned in 1982 by Ronald Reagan.
    Inside the silo, you can see up close a missile that was used for training exercises (the original was moved when the silo became a museum), the control room, and the living quarters in a place that was built to survive a direct attack from a mult-megaton nuclear blast. The corridors look like they belong on the Death Star, but this is no science fiction. The culmination of the tour is a simulated launch, complete with secret codes and two-key ignition, a count down, and a blastoff. The nuclear winter, resulting fallout and post-apocalyptic aftermath is left to the imagination. Sitting deep within the chambers of one of the most destructive devices ever created by man is a much more frightening experience then any haunted house.
    On a few nights of the year, you can even arrange to sleep in the old crew’s quarters, where men and women spent their lives awaiting the signal for nuclear war. When John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963, in the silo’s first year of operation, both launch keys were placed on the table to prepare to fire the missile. Attendants, for security reasons (and perhaps psychological ones too), were never told where the missiles they were ready to fire were aimed.

    Read more about Titan Missile Museum on Atlas Obscura…

    Category: Museums and Collections, Unique Collections, Inspired Inventions, Instruments of Science, Amazing Automata, Repositories of Knowledge, Subterranean Sites
    Location: East Sahuarita, Arizona, US
    Edited by: Henry, Dylan

  • The Shoe Tree of Middlegate

    Image of The Shoe Tree of Middlegate located in Middlegate, Nevada, US

    The Shoe Tree of Middlegate

    A tree bears footwear on the loneliest road in America

    Near the one-horse town of Middlegate, Nevada, on US Highway 50, the so-called “Loneliest Road in America,” set against a backdrop of barren, arid desert and mountains, grows a lone cottonwood tree strung with footwear. Trees decorated with objects–shoes, underwear, gum, or whatever else passersby have handy–are as wholesome as apple pie, and nearly as common in America. This shoe tree, however, has a particularly good story (and a lot of shoes) attached.
    It happened like this: on a warm desert night, a newlywed couple camping beneath the large cottonwood got into an argument. The woman, a quick-tempered sort, threatened to walk away. “If you do,” growled the man, “you’ll have to walk barefoot.” He then proceeded to throw her shoes up into the tree and drive off to a nearby bar, where the bartender, an upstanding citizen if ever there was one, convinced him to return to his wife. He drove back to the cottonwood tree–needless to say, his wife was still there–and the couple managed to reconcile and live happily ever after. They returned several years later with their first child to throw his shoes up into the tree under which they had fought and reunited. The rest, as they say, is history.
    Witness the footwear of generations gone by. Participate. Drive barefoot the rest of the way. In the summer, the shoes might look from afar like some odd fruit hanging from the leafy boughs of the cottonwood. In winter, they make a particularly impressive spectacle, set against a background of desert frost.

    Read more about The Shoe Tree of Middlegate on Atlas Obscura…

    Category: Unusual Monuments
    Location: Middlegate, Nevada, US
    Edited by: Henry, Dylan