COOPERSTOWN (AP) - Ronnie Goodrun remembers the first time he stood at the bottom of a silo and stared up at the tip of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.

The young airman found standing beside a nuclear warhead capping a missile six stories high a bit unnerving.

"You valued your life," he recalled. Airmen were told the missiles were disarmed for maintenance, but Goodrun wasn't comforted. "It was scary," he said.

The remembrance came as Goodrun, now a civilian working for the U.S. Air Force, showed a group of sightseers a decommissioned silo on an expanse of prairie two miles east of Cooperstown a piece of North Dakota history many are working to preserve.

"We think these sites are very important to North Dakota," said Merle Paaverud, who heads the State Historical Society of North Dakota, which is spearheading an effort to preserve a launch control center and empty missile silo to commemorate the state's role in the Cold War.

The launch center and silo, which last saw duty in 1997, were part of the now-deactivated 321st Missile Wing, with 150 missiles scattered around the prairie, based at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. The other silos and launch centers have been dismantled.

At Paaverud's urging, the Air Force agreed to preserve the decommissioned center and silo, but the historical society now faces a Dec. 31, 2007, deadline to line up funding to convert the facilities to a museum.

"So we're kind of under the gun," Paaverud told a group of supporters Thursday. The group included legislators and a delegation visiting from Valley City.

The society received a $250,000 grant from Save America's Treasures. It will ask the North Dakota Legislature to match that donation as part of a Cold War heritage site.

Paaverud said the missile silos once associated with the Grand Forks Air Force Base, as well as those still part of the Minot Air Force Base, are just the latest in a long list of military installations in the state dating back to Dakota Territory posts, including Fort Abraham Lincoln and Fort Abercrombie.

"This is one of our modern-day outposts," Paaverud said. "Right here under the rich and fertile soil of North Dakota, we had missiles."

The state's historical officer, Paaverud grew up in Finley, another farming community surrounded by missile silos. The Air Force crews became part of the local social fabric; his sister married an airman.

Goodrun escorted a group from the historical society and supporters into the former launch center, code-named Oscar Zero, which Paaverud said looked like a big ranch-style house "with a lot of strange stuff coming out of the top," including antennae, vents and lights.

The building housed 10 men with room for 30, with living quarters and support facilities for the launch control center, located 45 feet underground. The Air Force has preserved the facility, which still had an eerie, lived-in feel.

The chow hall's counter had knives and forks, salt and pepper ready. The magazine rack was a time capsule of late 1990s, hinting at the conflict that would replace the cold war. A U.S. News & World Report cover featuring a portrait of Iraq's Saddam Hussein asked: "Can We Get Him? The Pentagon's Candid Assessment."

Down the hall, in the room once used by the command officer, a binder marked "Flight Crew Check Lists" rested on a desk, left there with a "Save this please!" sticky note by an officer with a preservation instinct.

The Air Force boarded up the windows and continues to ventilate and maintain the facility, so a center that saw three decades of use will be in good condition if resurrected as a museum. A slight musty odor, a few dead mice caught in sticky traps and a few cobwebs were tangible reminders that Launch Control Center Oscar Zero has been abandoned, made obsolete by a 1991 disarmament treaty.

Forty-five feet below ground, the launch control center was entombed in steel and concrete and floating on a suspension system designed to withstand a direct hit from a Soviet missile. On the steel door to the control room, beneath a large "Space Command" decal, the last crew to man the controls inscribed their names in a black marker.

"Last alert 17 July 1997," the crew wrote, even noting the military time, "1315 local," or 1:15 p.m. Above the door, in red-stenciled letters, loomed the admonition, "No-lone zone: Two person concept applies," a reminder that two officers must staff the controls around the clock, each armed with a key and a code, and both were required in order to launch a missile carrying a nuclear bomb.

The center had its own underground power plant, with an elaborate air ventilation system, located at the other end of the tunnel, also entombed in steel and concrete. Portable ventilators have been used since the facility was shut down.

While growing up in Cooperstown during the 1960s, Don Vigesaa saw the area thrive with construction crews and later missile crews, a constant presence in their Air Force blue trucks. "Our population, I'm sure, peaked in those years," he said.

Vigesaa, now a local car dealer and legislator, regards the launch center and silo, designated November 33, as an important legacy.

"Personally, I'd like to see it preserved," he said. "I'm hopeful my colleagues would be willing to give it a serious look as well."

Wes Anderson, of the Barnes County Historical Society in Valley City, 45 miles southeast, also wants to preserve the launch center and missile silo, a significant chapter in the state's military history.

"It's important we save this," he said. "It's a continuation of the fort stories."