Thursday, September 6, 2001
Blacktop in Lawn gets credit for Cold War
victory
By Bill Whitaker
Reporter-News Staff Writer
LAWN — To residents of this Taylor
County hamlet of 353 people, the road east out of town is Farm-to-Market
Road 604. But to politicians and historians, FM 604 is now “the
Farm Road that Won the Cold War.”
No kidding.
During a roadside ceremony just east of Lawn on Wednesday, the
first of several state highway signs erected along FM 604 was
unveiled, proclaiming it the Atlas ICBM Highway.
The 51-mile stretch of farm road goes by five of the dozen Atlas
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silos that ringed Dyess Air
Force Base from 1962 until 1965, when the missiles were deemed
obsolete and removed.
While most of the abandoned silos are in private hands, the locally
based Atlas ICBM Historical Society has been trying to increase
awareness of their role in the Cold War. So came the idea of renaming
the 55-year-old FM 604.
“I had to ask somebody what an ICBM even was,” Texas
Department of Transportation engineer Bill Hale said. “I’m
not from around here and I’d always thought of West Texas
as pretty remote during the Cold War.
“But with all the missiles probably pointed our way and the
missiles we had here, this part of Texas was actually ground zero.”
Former missilemen say the state designation is overdue —
even if Big Country residents 40 years ago were only vaguely aware
of the mammoth silos and the Cold War.
“I think most people were kind of oblivious to it,”
said 59-year-old Frank Dlugas, a former airman who worked at a
silo near the community of Nolan. “There were more important
things to worry about, like the price of cattle, the price of
oil, and just making a living out here.”
Larry Sanders, 48, Texas State Technical College dean of institutional
advancement and founder of the Atlas ICBM Historical Society,
said the idea of getting the road its new name began while driving
throughout the sprawling district during his days working for
state Sen. Troy Fraser.
“That’s when I realized how many towns in our area had
these missile silos in their neighborhood,” he said. “I’m
not saying any one of them should become ‘Atlas Town USA,’
but many of the towns have that potential.”
Sanders, who is leasing the silo near Lawn to turn into an underground
banquet hall and gave a tour of it following FM 604 dedication
ceremonies, said the Atlas society would like to see a missile
museum placed in one of the abandoned sites some day.
But on Wednesday, officials were content to unveil a new highway
sign — and that took some doing.
“You’ve got to remember,” state Rep. Jim Keffer
explained as he and Rep. Bob Hunter tugged at ropes covering the
state sign, “we’re politicians, not engineers.”
Contact story editor Bill Whitaker at 676-6732
or whitakerb@abinews.com
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©2001, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps.
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