Titan I 568-B Missile Silo Larson AFB Washington

Overview

Titan I Missile Complex 568-B was a hardened intercontinental ballistic missile installation constructed in the irrigated agricultural country south-southwest of Warden, Washington. Strategic Air Command assigned the complex to the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron at Larson Air Force Base. Three HGM-25A Titan I missiles and their underground command, power, guidance, propellant, launcher, utility, and personnel systems formed one-third of Larson's nine-launcher T-4 field. The sibling complexes were 568-A in the Batum and Odessa area and 568-C in the Quincy and Royal City area.

Its military career was short, but its postmilitary record is unusually distinctive. After the Air Force removed the missiles and much ground equipment, the property entered federal disposal and private ownership. In 1968 the owner contracted to convert the underground caverns at Warden and another former missile property at Warden for liquefied petroleum gas storage. The Warden installation became the test of whether the conversion had succeeded. A June 1969 gas discharge did not demonstrate successful completion, and the dispute produced a published 1970 court opinion. That record supplies rare site-specific evidence for an attempted industrial reuse of a Titan I complex.

The environmental record must be interpreted with equal care. EPA identifies the facility through ID WAN001002314 and lists it as not on the National Priorities List, with a non-NPL status of NFRAP. Washington Ecology placed FUDS Larson Titan S2 on a 2008 list requiring no further action after site hazard assessment. A 2001 Government Accountability Office table identified the property as eligible for the Formerly Used Defense Sites program but without a funded project at that date. These classifications document administrative review. They do not certify the underground structure for entry, establish public access, prove current ownership, or substitute for a contemporary structural and environmental inspection.

Evidence is separated by scale throughout this history. Official histories provide exact milestones for the Larson field and 568th Squadron but often do not identify which complex reached an intermediate milestone first. A 1962 Air Force Magazine photograph documents real Titan Base T-4 activation work but does not identify 568-A, 568-B, or 568-C. Standard Titan I drawings explain the installation's functional plan but are not a surveyed 568-B as-built plan. Current agency points and a project coordinate identify the general property, not individual shafts or legal boundaries.

Installation Identity, Location, and Boundaries

The Air Force and engineering literature also identify the complex as Larson Site 2, Complex 2B, or the Warden site. Federal environmental records use Larson AFB Titan I Missile Facility S-2, Larson Titan S-2, FUDS property F10WA0350, and EPA ID WAN001002314. These are operational, geographic, disposal, and regulatory names for one former missile installation.

The site belongs in Grant County, Washington. The National Park Service and Department of Defense inventory places Warden Site 2 about four miles south-southwest of Warden and identifies three launchers, 568-B-1, 568-B-2, and 568-B-3. EPA gives the street location as 11744 Road U SE, at Road 11 SE and Road U SE. A July 2008 Washington Ecology notice used 101 Road 10 SE. The differing rural address forms are retained as source-specific descriptions rather than silently merged into a fabricated precise entrance address.

A commercial property listing drawing on public records associates APN 181116000 and 50.58 acres with 11744 Road U SE. The figure is useful as a qualified modern parcel reference, but the underlying Grant County assessor card or deed was not independently retrieved. The acreage therefore remains approximate and cannot be substituted for the original Air Force fee acquisition, access and utility easements, fenced operational area, environmental study boundary, or present ownership statement.

The physical installation was larger in functional reach than any single acreage number suggests. Remote power, communications, roads, utilities, drainage, security clearances, and construction staging connected the buried plant to the surrounding landscape. Later parcel consolidation or subdivision may not reproduce the 1959 acquisition pattern. No surveyed boundary drawing was found that could reconcile those categories safely.

The Warden Landscape

The Warden complex occupied open Columbia Basin farm country south-southwest of the community. The region's broad fields and relatively low population density provided the separation needed for three dispersed launch complexes. Dispersal reduced the chance that one attack could destroy all nine Larson launchers and separated each three-missile group from the parent airfield and from the other groups.

The same geography imposed a heavy support burden. Alert crews, security personnel, maintenance specialists, spare parts, test equipment, food, fuel, and emergency services moved between Larson Air Force Base and a remote installation over rural roads. Hot, dry summers, winter cold, wind, dust, irrigation, drainage, and groundwater all affected construction and maintenance. The facility therefore had to combine hardened isolation with dependable communication and logistics.

Warden was a geographic reference rather than evidence that the complex was inside a developed town. The missile installation was a fenced federal weapons property in agricultural country. Its underground spaces were specialized for strategic alert and not ordinary commercial storage. The 1968 conversion contract illustrates how difficult it was to transform that purpose-built complex into a civilian facility even when the immense caverns appeared attractive for bulk storage.

Larson supplied command, housing, personnel administration, training, logistics, maintenance coordination, air transportation, and wing-level support. The remote site generated emergency power and could sustain protected alert operations, but it was not an independent base. Its military identity must be preserved as a separate installation within the parent field, not collapsed into Larson and not mistaken for a civilian Warden industrial property that happened to contain concrete shafts.

The Larson T-4 Field

The Larson program was known as Titan Base T-4. The Army Corps of Engineers opened a Larson area office in October 1959 to administer nine silos at three dispersed complexes and supporting work at Larson Air Force Base. Oversight transferred to the Corps of Engineers Ballistic Missile Construction Office in October 1960 as the national missile program centralized schedule, engineering, and contractor control.

The field contained three standardized three-launcher complexes. 568-A served the Batum and Odessa sector, 568-B the Warden sector, and 568-C the Quincy and Royal City sector. Together they provided nine launchers for the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron. The arrangement spread the retaliatory force across a broad area while retaining common training, communications, maintenance, logistics, and command.

Larson's Titan mission existed alongside B-52 and KC-135 operations at the parent base. The 4170th Strategic Wing initially supported the missile squadron, and the 462d Strategic Aerospace Wing assumed the relationship on February 1, 1963. Aircraft and missile missions shared the parent installation but occupied very different operating environments. Warden was a remote nuclear alert complex whose hardened underground machinery and strict command procedures differed sharply from ordinary airfield operations.

No located source states that Warden was the first Larson complex declared operational on July 16, 1962. The date therefore remains a field-wide milestone. The better controlled squadron milestones are the September 26 turnover and operational date in Air Force and unit records and the September 28 Headquarters Strategic Air Command declaration. Preserving that distinction avoids assigning an unnamed intermediate event to 568-B.

Design, Contracting, and Construction

Bid packages for the Larson complexes opened on November 18, 1959. The low bid, approximately $31.6 million for the principal field construction, came from a joint venture of MacDonald Construction Company, The Scott Company, Paul Hardeman, G. H. Leavell, F. E. Young, and Morrison-Knudsen. The figure covered the group program rather than 568-B alone. Later contracts supplied specialized systems, including propellant-loading equipment, and the final field cost necessarily extended beyond the initial construction bid.

Field construction began December 1, 1959. Work used a cut-and-fill method: contractors excavated immense pits for the central plant and launcher branches, built reinforced concrete and structural-steel facilities in the open, installed heavy equipment, then backfilled and restored a comparatively sparse surface. The work required exact coordination among civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, communications, guidance, ventilation, hydraulic, and propellant specialists. A small alignment error could interfere with a missile elevator, blast door, tunnel joint, pipe run, or cable system.

Water was a major Larson-field problem. By August 1961 one of the three sites was pumping approximately 175,000 gallons a day. The source does not identify which complex experienced that rate, so the figure cannot be assigned specifically to 568-B. Improved drainage reduced the problem at field scale. The episode nevertheless shows why drainage galleries, pumps, sumps, waterproofing, and groundwater control were vital to an installation whose most important spaces lay far below grade.

The Larson project recorded no worker deaths, but its initial lost-time accident rate was about twice the national average for comparable construction. The program added a full-time safety engineer, and the rate later fell below the comparable average. These field-wide facts describe the pressure and risk of a fast missile-building program without inventing a site-specific accident record for 568-B.

The rapid schedule also created a moving technical target. Titan I was still being developed while operational sites were built. Changes in missile equipment, blast criteria, elevators, doors, guidance, communications, propellant handling, safety interlocks, and acceptance tests could force rework. Concrete completion therefore did not equal combat readiness. The finished structures had to receive government-furnished equipment, missile-support machinery, command systems, and trained crews before acceptance.

Standard Underground Design and Surface Layout

No complete site-specific measured drawing of 568-B was located. Its documented three-launcher role and membership in the standardized Larson field permit the use of established Titan I engineering as a strong analogue, but not as a claim that every dimension or later alteration at Warden matched another surveyed complex. The accompanying layout graphic is therefore labeled representative standard configuration and not a 568-B as-built survey.

The underground plant centered on a protected access route, launch control center, powerhouse, utility spaces, antenna terminal, and connecting junctions. The control center housed command consoles, status displays, communications, authentication materials, and crew working space. The powerhouse held diesel generators and electrical distribution equipment so the site could operate after losing commercial power. Ventilation, cooling, water, sewage, compressed air, and hydraulic systems supported both the weapon and the people assigned to it.

Three launcher branches extended from the central area. Each branch incorporated an equipment terminal, a propellant terminal, connecting tunnels, and a missile silo. The equipment terminal supported the launcher elevator and associated machinery. The propellant terminal handled RP-1 kerosene fuel and liquid oxygen equipment. The silo contained the missile on a large elevator beneath paired doors. Titan I could not launch from inside the silo. It had to be fueled, raised into the open, and fired from the surface.

Two retractable guidance antennas occupied protected antenna silos. Titan I carried inertial instruments but relied on radio corrections transmitted from the ground during early flight. Redundant antennas reduced the risk that a single failure would prevent guidance support. Their presence explains why a Titan I complex contained multiple large shafts in addition to the three missile silos.

Surface features included security fencing, access and patrol roads, launcher doors, antenna doors, vents, hatches, utility structures, orientation and survey features, drainage works, and support areas. Salvage, private reuse, weather, standing water, and environmental investigation may have changed many of those elements. Historic design cannot establish current structural condition.

The HGM-25A Titan I was a two-stage liquid-propellant missile approximately 98 feet long. Both stages burned RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen. A nuclear reentry vehicle gave the missile its strategic effect, while engines, airframe, inertial components, radio guidance, communications, and launch equipment came from a national contractor network. At 568-B, these elements operated as one system. The missile could not fulfill its mission without the site's power, oxidizer plant, elevators, doors, antennas, crew, and authenticated command link.

Liquid oxygen governed readiness. Its extremely low temperature and continual boil-off prevented long-term storage aboard the missile, so the launch sequence included oxidizer loading. Crews treated oxygen equipment as surgically clean because oil, dirt, or incompatible material could cause fire or explosion. HAER interviews describe cleanliness standards below 150 microns, pressurized clean rooms, vapor degreasing, caustic cleaning, black-light inspection, and repeated checks. Liquid nitrogen, high-pressure nitrogen and helium, diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, lubricants, batteries, and other industrial materials added more hazards.

Propellant Loading Exercises tested every missile on a roughly 90-day cycle, which meant approximately one exercise each month at a three-launcher complex. The procedure forced operations and maintenance personnel to verify tanks, pumps, lines, valves, sensors, timing, and emergency actions under conditions approaching a real countdown. These exercises were essential because Titan I's deterrent value depended on machinery that normally remained idle. They also placed sustained demands on the environmental, safety, and waste-handling systems later examined during cleanup.

A launch order required authenticated messages and controlled cooperation by trained crew members. Once the sequence began, the system loaded liquid oxygen, checked missile and site status, opened the selected silo doors, raised the missile on its elevator, deployed a guidance antenna, and completed ignition preparations. The three missiles could be launched in sequence. Titan I was dramatically faster than an aircraft-delivered weapon, but the fueling and elevation process left it more exposed and slower to respond than the later Titan II and Minuteman systems that launched directly from closed, fueled or solid-propellant silos.

Site Activation and Acceptance

The Corps of Engineers turned the three completed Larson complexes to the Site Activation Task Force on March 16, 1962. Titan missiles had begun arriving from Denver on January 23. Activation teams installed, checked, calibrated, and exercised systems that construction contractors had placed in the underground plants. Federal Electric Corporation, a service associate of International Telephone and Telegraph, supported Martin with installation and testing of missiles and ground equipment, interim operation, contractor support, and turnover assistance.

A contemporary Air Force Magazine advertisement photographed a Larson Titan Base T-4 activation scene. It is valuable because it shows real equipment and personnel from the correct missile field in 1962. The caption does not name a particular complex, so this history does not present it as a photograph of 568-B. It documents the shared activation program at Larson and illustrates the contractor-intensive transition from construction to Air Force control.

The first Larson complex was declared operational on July 16, 1962, but the official narrative reviewed here does not say whether it was 568-A, 568-B, or 568-C. Assigning that date to Warden would create false precision. The controlled squadron milestone is September 26, when the 568th completed turnover and became operational according to the official Air Force milestone table and unit history. A Strategic Air Command chronology gives September 28 as the date headquarters declared the squadron operational. The two dates describe different command actions and are retained rather than forced into one.

Organization and the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron

The Air Force redesignated and activated the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron on October 24, 1960 and organized it at Larson on April 1, 1961. The squadron was initially assigned to the 4170th Strategic Wing. It transferred to the 462d Strategic Aerospace Wing on February 1, 1963. Its weapon system was the SM-68, later designated HGM-25A, Titan I.

The squadron operated all three complexes as one combat organization. A particular alert crew worked at an individual site, while squadron leaders, maintenance organizations, security forces, communications systems, and parent-wing resources connected the entire field. Nine launchers did not mean nine independent commands. The complexes had local control and self-contained support, but authenticated orders and readiness accountability flowed through Strategic Air Command.

Personnel required recurring training in console operations, emergency procedures, propellant safety, electrical and hydraulic systems, communications, security, and nuclear command and control. Maintenance specialists had to understand how a defect in one subsystem affected the whole launch sequence. The early missile force depended on skilled human monitoring because many functions that later became automated still required extensive testing, alignment, servicing, and procedural control.

Alert Operations

Alert duty combined routine checks with readiness for an event of extraordinary consequence. Crews monitored status lights, communications, environmental controls, electrical systems, security reports, and missile condition. They maintained logs, ran prescribed tests, and followed two-person control procedures. Security forces controlled entry and patrolled the surface, while maintenance teams responded to equipment discrepancies without compromising nuclear surety.

The underground complex was designed to continue functioning after outside utilities failed. Diesel generation, stored supplies, filtered ventilation, protected communications, and hardened access supported survivability. Hardening did not make the installation invulnerable. Its dispersal, burial, blast-resistant construction, redundancy, and rapid launch sequence together sought to preserve retaliatory capability long enough to deter attack.

Titan I's cryogenic design placed a special burden on alert operations. Liquid oxygen could not remain indefinitely in the missile. A launch order would initiate a controlled sequence involving authentication, system checks, propellant loading, guidance preparation, silo-door operation, elevator movement, and surface launch. The need to raise the missile left the weapon exposed during the final sequence, one reason later Titan II and Minuteman systems emphasized in-silo launch and more readily stored propellants.

The radio-guidance system linked the missile to protected ground antennas. Inertial instruments provided basic navigation, while ground equipment calculated and transmitted corrections during early flight. That arrangement demanded reliable electronics, precise surveying, communication among subsystems, and functioning antenna machinery. Guidance was not an accessory. It was part of the operational weapon system.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The squadron reached operational status just weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The timing placed the new Larson force on alert during the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War. Official sources establish the squadron's operational status and the national alert environment, but the records reviewed do not provide a surviving 568-B crew log or a site-specific narrative of those days.

The significance therefore lies in confirmed readiness rather than invented drama. Men at Warden maintained a live intercontinental ballistic missile installation while national command authorities confronted Soviet missile deployment in Cuba. Communications, authentication, security, mechanical reliability, and disciplined adherence to procedure all carried immediate strategic importance. The site's purpose was deterrence, and the crisis tested whether that deterrent could be presented as credible without being used.

Communications, Guidance, Power, Security, and Maintenance

Reliable communications connected the remote complex to squadron and Strategic Air Command channels. Emergency Action Messages required authentication and controlled handling. Two-person procedures reduced the possibility that one individual could initiate critical actions. Exact equipment complements changed during construction and service, and no complete 568-B communications inventory was located, so standard Titan I functions are described without assigning an unsupported model number to every rack or circuit.

The powerhouse served as the site's mechanical heart. Multiple diesel generators, switchgear, batteries, hydraulic equipment, ventilation, pumps, and cooling systems allowed the complex to support missile readiness independent of ordinary utilities. Machinery also created maintenance demands and potential environmental sources. Fuels, lubricants, solvents, electrical components, sumps, drains, and wastewater systems later became part of the broader environmental inquiry at former missile sites.

Security began with remoteness, fencing, controlled gates, alarms, patrols, identification procedures, and armed response. It continued underground through protected portals and controlled areas. Modern private ownership and the visibility of large surface doors do not erase those historic layers, but neither do they make the site safe to enter. Deep shafts, decayed floors, unguarded openings, poor air, standing water, electrical remnants, and contaminated media can turn curiosity into a fatal hazard.

Maintenance was continuous because Titan I combined cryogenic propellant systems, high-pressure gases, mechanical elevators, heavy doors, guidance electronics, power generation, ventilation, and early command equipment. A failure in one component could remove a launcher from alert. Preventive maintenance, periodic tests, parts supply, contractor support, and disciplined documentation were as essential to readiness as the missile itself.

Phaseout and Deactivation

Titan I entered service as a first-generation operational ICBM and was overtaken quickly by systems that could remain fueled, launch from within a silo, and operate with fewer people. In May 1964 the national phaseout schedule accelerated. The short lifespan did not make the Larson investment meaningless. Titan I trained organizations, crews, engineers, and contractors in dispersed ICBM operations and helped establish the procedures used by later forces.

The 568th removed its first missile from alert on January 4, 1965 and its last on February 2. The last missile left the squadron on February 8, and the unit inactivated March 25. Those milestones are squadron-wide. Available sources do not identify the exact day each individual 568-B launcher left alert or the order in which the three complexes were emptied.

After deactivation, missiles went to Norton Air Force Base and contractors removed much aerospace ground equipment, including diesel generators. The sites passed to the General Services Administration for open-market disposal. Equipment removal and salvage did not eliminate the reinforced shafts, tunnels, terminals, and major concrete structures. The government was disposing of specialized real property whose underground volume and hazards made ordinary redevelopment difficult.

Disposal, Salvage, and Private Ownership

After the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron inactivated, the Air Force removed the missiles and contractors removed much aerospace ground equipment. The three Larson complexes passed into General Services Administration disposal. A National Park Service inventory later described the Warden property as privately owned, with materials salvaged and the underground structure remaining substantially present at the time of the study. That statement is historical, not a current engineering inspection.

The most important postmilitary episode began on November 1, 1968. Fenix & Scisson, Inc. contracted with Underground Storage, Inc., the owner of former Titan sites at Warden and Warden, to plug and seal openings and convert the caverns for storage of liquefied petroleum gas and related products. The estimated cost was $175,000. The agreement confirms that one private owner was pursuing linked commercial reuse at both sites and that Warden was expected to function as an underground storage plant.

The work did not proceed as expected. The published court opinion states that performance failed and costs increased. On May 27, 1969, the parties reached a compromise under which Fenix & Scisson would accept $60,000, contingent on successful completion of the Warden facility. This condition made Warden the decisive project rather than merely another property mentioned in the dispute.

In June 1969 gas was discharged into the main Warden cavern, but the attempt did not demonstrate successful completion. The failed test led to disputes in federal court in eastern Washington and in Delaware. On January 23, 1970, the Superior Court of Delaware issued the reported decision Fenix & Scisson, Inc. v. Underground Storage, Inc., 262 A.2d 260. The decision is legal evidence for the contract, compromise, test, and litigation. It is not an engineering report and does not reveal the precise piping layout, gas quantity, exact failure mechanism, or later condition of every underground space.

The attempted conversion is historically significant because it shows the economic appeal and practical difficulty of reusing Titan I complexes. Their caverns offered immense enclosed volume, but their geometry, seals, penetrations, drainage, ventilation, fire safety, access, and legacy military systems were not designed for ordinary commercial storage. The conversion effort belongs to the history of the same former installation and does not constitute a new military installation requiring a separate row.

Exact current title was not verified. The older National Park Service private-ownership statement, 1968 owner identity, commercial parcel data, and present EPA description cannot substitute for a current deed.

Environmental Registration and Response

EPA identifies the property as Larson AFB Titan Missile Facility S-2, EPA ID WAN001002314, at 11744 Road U SE in Grant County. The site is not on the National Priorities List. Its non-NPL status is NFRAP, meaning no further remedial action is planned under the federal Superfund assessment pathway on the information used for that determination. EPA also states that the location is not a federal facility, consistent with postmilitary private disposal.

Washington Ecology used the name FUDS Larson Titan S2 and Facility Site ID 78312864. A July 17, 2008 Site Register notice recorded a completed consultation for the Warden property. Ecology's August 20, 2008 Hazardous Sites List placed the site in the section titled No Further Action Sites After Site Hazard Assessment. Ecology explained that sites in that section had undergone a site hazard assessment and needed no further action under the state Model Toxics Control Act based on that review.

The federal Formerly Used Defense Sites identity is F10WA0350. A 2001 Government Accountability Office Washington table listed Larson Titan S-2 in Grant County as eligible for FUDS but without a project and with no reported cost in that historical table. The no-project entry is a dated program status. It should not be expanded into a claim that no military-related environmental question ever existed or that later agencies could not revisit the property if new information emerged.

The federal facility identifier associated with the property is WA09799F331900. That identifier fits the documented sequence between Larson S-1, WA09799F331800, and Larson S-3, WA09799F332000, and is independently reproduced in public military-site data. Because the current EPA page emphasizes WAN001002314 and the 2008 Ecology record emphasizes Facility Site ID 78312864, this history preserves all identifiers with their program context instead of treating one as a replacement for the others.

NFRAP and state no-further-action findings answer regulatory screening questions, not structural ones. They do not certify shafts, tunnels, floors, stairs, ventilation, gas residues, confined-space air, standing water, or fall protection. They also do not grant public access or establish the current owner's intended use. No current sampling report, structural inspection, deed restriction, or underground-entry authorization was located.

The apparent contrast between an eligible FUDS property and no further action is not necessarily a contradiction. Eligibility recognizes former Department of Defense use and potential program responsibility. A site hazard assessment can still conclude that available evidence does not warrant further action under a particular cleanup framework.

Surviving Features and Current Status

The National Park Service inventory reported the Warden structure as remaining after salvage, while the 1968 and 1969 storage project confirms that the principal underground caverns were accessible enough to become the subject of conversion work. Those sources establish substantial post-disposal survival at their respective dates. They do not establish 2026 structural condition.

The three-silo Titan I plan normally left recognizable surface relationships even after buildings and removable equipment were stripped: launcher-door areas, antenna-silo positions, vents, access routes, and the geometry of the buried central plant. A current aerial image on The Military Standard page shows surface remnants consistent with the former complex, but it is not a measured survey or safety inspection. The history does not infer the condition of ladders, platforms, tunnels, seals, drainage, air quality, or utilities from aerial appearance.

EPA's current profile and the 2008 state decision establish an administrative status, not a public attraction. Exact ownership, occupancy, commercial reuse, and day-to-day use remain unverified. No authoritative source reviewed grants general visitation. Any lawful inspection would require current owner permission and professional planning for deep shafts, confined spaces, unstable surfaces, water, poor air, residual industrial materials, and fall hazards.

The 1968 storage contract also raises an evidence limit. It proves that liquefied petroleum gas conversion was attempted, and the 1969 test failed to demonstrate successful completion. It does not prove that all gas and conversion equipment were removed, that later storage never occurred, or that present hazards derive from that episode. No modern engineering or environmental report was found that resolves those questions.

The safest current description is therefore a decommissioned, privately disposed former Titan I complex whose major underground works historically survived, whose attempted LPG-storage conversion failed to meet the contract test, and whose federal and state assessment records did not require further action under the cited programs. Anything more specific about current physical access, ownership, use, or safety would exceed the evidence.

Detailed Chronology

• 1955 The Air Force selected Martin's Titan proposal as a second intercontinental ballistic missile program.
• 1958 National planning moved Titan I toward dispersed hardened operational deployment.
• October 1959 The Army Corps of Engineers opened its Larson area office for the T-4 field.
• November 18, 1959 Larson field construction bids were opened.
• December 1, 1959 Principal construction of the Larson field began.
• October 1960 Construction oversight transferred to the Corps of Engineers Ballistic Missile Construction Office.
• October 24, 1960 The Air Force redesignated and activated the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron.
• April 1, 1961 The 568th Squadron was organized at Larson Air Force Base under the 4170th Strategic Wing.
• August 1961 One unidentified Larson site was pumping about 175,000 gallons of water per day; the source does not identify Warden as that site.
• January 23, 1962 Titan missiles began arriving at Larson from Denver.
• March 16, 1962 The Corps turned all three Larson complexes to the Site Activation Task Force.
• April 1962 Air Force Magazine documented Federal Electric Corporation activation work at Larson Titan Base T-4.
• July 16, 1962 The first Larson complex was declared operational; the source does not identify which complex.
• September 26, 1962 Official Air Force and unit-history records mark squadron turnover and operational status.
• September 28, 1962 Headquarters Strategic Air Command declared the 568th Squadron operational according to SAC chronology.
• October 1962 The operational Larson Titan force stood alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• February 1, 1963 The 568th Squadron was assigned to the 462d Strategic Aerospace Wing.
• May 1964 The national Titan I phaseout schedule accelerated.
• January 4, 1965 The first 568th Squadron missile came off alert.
• February 2, 1965 The last 568th Squadron missile came off alert.
• February 8, 1965 The last squadron missile was shipped from the Larson field.
• March 25, 1965 The 568th Strategic Missile Squadron was inactivated.
• 1965 and after Missiles went to Norton Air Force Base, ground equipment was removed, and the complexes entered General Services Administration disposal.
• November 1, 1968 Fenix & Scisson contracted with Underground Storage to convert the Warden and Batum caverns for liquefied petroleum gas and related-product storage.
• May 27, 1969 The parties reached a $60,000 compromise contingent on successful completion of the Warden facility.
• June 1969 Gas was discharged into the main Warden cavern, but the test did not demonstrate successful completion.
• January 23, 1970 The Delaware Superior Court issued its reported decision in Fenix & Scisson, Inc. v. Underground Storage, Inc.
• 2001 A GAO table listed Larson Titan S-2 as FUDS property F10WA0350, eligible but without a funded project at that date.
• July 17, 2008 Washington Ecology's Site Register recorded completed consultation for FUDS Larson Titan S2.
• August 20, 2008 Ecology placed the Warden property in its no-further-action list after site hazard assessment.
• 2015 EPA's archived current-site inventory recorded Larson AFB Titan Missile Facility S-2 as non-NPL NFRAP; the live profile continues to display that status.