He glorifies living underground, but carefully measures his words. He is also media savvy, as evidenced by the dozens of newspaper and magazine clippings taped to a hallway wall. Peden is a former Topeka high school teacher-turned-real estate mogul, who specializes in selling off these abandoned missile bases. Friends built two faux castle turrets over the bunker's escape hatches. He built this small structure over the entrance to his living space and in the shadow of a castle turret. Photo courtesy: SiloMan at The one structure Peden added to the property is a sunroom containing a hot tub. Off the exit, south 7 miles, left at the T, follow the curve to the right but not onto the gravel road, another couple of turns and you find yourself on Peden's mile-long driveway. If you think Topeka is in the middle of nowhere, then Missile Base Road is nowhere. He has owned the place since 1983, but it took him 10 years to convince his wife to live there.Īs the miles pass it becomes obvious why the government decided to build a cluster of missile sites where it did.
Heading west out of town you travel the same open road Ed Peden often drives to pick up groceries and visit civilization since moving into his nuclear missile base some 15 years ago. It stretches past miles of Kansas farmland, occasionally interrupted by a rest stop or filling station. The I-70 interstate skirts downtown Topeka. The United States wanted the entire world to know it was ready, willing and able to respond to any threat. In 1961 America's nuclear muscle was flexed, paraded down the streets of Topeka, Kansas. Most were shuttered after only a few years of war readiness. The government spent millions of dollars building each of the sites but evolving weapons technology made them quickly obsolete.
Some resembled underground cities in their scale. Typically, the sites were enormous underground bunkers, built to withstand a direct nuclear hit. Holding his nose to dive under doorways between the flooded rooms, Peden took his first tour of what would soon become his family home.Īt the height of the Cold War in the early '60s, the United States built dozens of missile bases across the Midwest to launch salvos of Atlas and Titan ICBMs. Most of the rooms were three-quarters flooded, and the water had stagnated for nearly two decades. Peden stripped to his shorts and dropped a rope ladder into the flooded base. He found 34 acres of grass in need of mowing and, deep below ground, an 18,000-square-foot warren of concrete tunnels, most of it flooded with rainwater. In 1982, schoolteacher Ed Peden drove out to investigate a decommissioned nuclear missile bunker that was up for sale near his hometown of Topeka, Kansas.
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