GREELEY, Co -- In every corner of Colorado you'll find both natural and man-made wonders. We found one just 10 miles from Greeley. The Atlas-E missile silo was built in the early 1960's. It was the first ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile put into the ground. Caretaker Pete Ambrose says no matter how you feel about war, the silo is a piece of US history.

The missile coffin held a four megaton bomb, 500 times more powerful than Hiroshima. It laid flat in the silo and when activated would rise up out of the ground, similar to how Dracula rises out of a coffin. There was a 9 man crew that would stay on site for 24 hours and then rotate back to Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

If the area was bombed, the silo would act as a shelter and could hold around 23-hundred people. Most of the rooms are now used for storage and hold some old Weld County records.

The missile was removed from the site soon after the Cold War and in 1992 was shot off in Vandenberg, California. The Air Force used some of these old missile to send up spy satellites.

The missile site is open for tours. For more information call the Weld County Building and Grounds Department at 970-356-4000 ext. 2020.