Minuteman Missiles: Hidden In The Heartland

On August 4, 1996, Paul Jensen did something he never thought he would do. He blew up a piece of his ranch land— the same land that his grandfather had homesteaded nearly 100 years earlier.

It was a clear, crisp morning when he pushed the button that set off a large underground explosion. A few hundred yards away a plume of concrete dust spread into the air with a poof and then fell back to earth. The handful of men standing with Jensen cheered and applauded.

Technically Jensen was not detonating anything on his land. More than thirty years earlier his father had signed that particular plot over to the U.S. government in perpetuity, for national defense.

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