National Security, Property Rights, and the Transformation of the Rural Western Politics

The western Plains may seem a strange place to look for the front lines of the Cold War, but in the early 1960s that is just what it became.  In 1962 the Air Force implanted 1,000 Minuteman missiles – each tipped with a 1.2 megaton warhead – in the region. Most remarkably the majority of these missiles were implanted on private lands. National security imperatives thus forced rural westerners to make difficult choices between two firmly held ideals: their reverence for property, and their allegiance to the flag. The government was, in effect, asking ranchers to give up their hard won property rights for an illusive sense of national security. Using oral histories, personal papers and national security documents, this paper explores how rural westerners negotiated these tensions from the 1960s through the 1980s, as early acquiescence gave way to sometimes fierce debate. Resistance to the national security state – coming from both the Left and Right – was channeled through discourses about land and property. Some rural ranchers turned to the nascent environmental and peace movements for direction in their fight. Others linked to the state’s rights rhetoric of the Sagebrush Rebellion. Though the objectives of these movements varied considerably in the end, recalling their shared political genealogy has important implications for understanding American political culture in the late 20^th century.