The Minutemen missile’s economic impact is immense, especially at the local level. Of course the cost of making the missiles is very high but It created jobs, and supported many paying jobs like Boeing. Boeing was the one that assembled and tested the minutemen. Even though the article doesn’t mention how much they made I presume it would be a lot. I believe the biggest impact the minutemen had was on the locals. They were forced to sell their lands and “ The project alone promised $60 million in construction contract alone” (heefner). Deposits were increasing in the local banks like first national and American national banks besides that more construction permits.What this shows about the cold war in the economic base is that there was a lot of money to be made be it by high contracting jobs or civilians and the government was spending a lot of money.
I believe the reason that Silo was preserved as a national historic site is because people would want to see it and it has a lot of historical significance; as the cold war being a silent war I believe people would want to see the place where the war was happening. There is also money to be made and it can be used to show the impact of the civil war.
Will Wright 
I enjoyed reading your post and thought that you bring up a variety of good points on why these missile silos were beneficial to the people of South Dakota. I agree that this definitely helped a lot of local communities and brought business and money to regions with a smaller population. I think that it is cool that they preserved the missile site and agree that it has historical significance. It is something that would be hard to imagine so keeping it around helps to show how big of a deal the Cold War was and how many technological advancements it led to.
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