U.S. Air Force Atlas Missile Site

The silo half a mile west was Atlas Site 4, built in 1961 and 1962 and turned over to the Strategic Air Command on September 15, 1962. Its missile, 49F, had been delivered that April. The crew named here had just finished a 24-hour tour at the site when their U-6A Beaver, serial 52-6108, struck an 80-foot power pole on the flight back to Lincoln and burned in a field. The site was decommissioned in March 1965 and passed into private hands in 1967. A mudjacking business and rental shops use the ground now.

What the plaque says

U.S. Air Force Atlas Missile Site The Atlas-F ICBM (operational 1961-65) was an important component of national defense during the Cold War. Twelve Atlas sites, one located half a mile west, were manned by the 551st Strategic Missile Squadron, Lincoln Air Force Base. On November 22, 1964, a crew from this site died in a plane crash a mile south of here. The victims were Maj. Lee Craft, 1st Lt. Chester Higgenbotham, S/Sgt. Harold Hrenchir, A/1C Donald Moore, A/2C David Theriot, and pilot Maj. Robert Wilson. S/Sgt Rudy D. Burd Nebraska State Historical Society Nebraska City Power Partners 2009

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 2.8 mi
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.
• Brownville — 24 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 31 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• Nebraska City — 3.3 mi
• Mayhew Cabin, 1855 — 3.4 mi
• The Kregel Windmill Factory — 3.8 mi
• Russell, Majors, & Waddell House — 3.8 mi