Bullseye Creede
In late winter 1964, a runaway Pershing missile test out of Fort Bliss, Texas came within a sonic boom of hitting Creede. A two-week Army search turned up nothing, and it wasn't until that spring, when a geology graduate student staking claims near where John himself was prospecting stumbled onto twisted metal in the brush, that the missile's nose cone was finally found.
Late winter, early 1964, Inez and I were in our back yard on the west mesa of Creede when we were jolted by a thunderous sonic boom followed by another boom of lesser proportions. It was puzzling because it failed to carry the after sounds of a fast jet airplane. Next day, we learned a missile from Fort Bliss, Texas had gone astray in our area.
Near the end of World War II, rockets were assembled and launched that devastated cities in England. We not only captured the base but also much of the hardware, specialists, and scientists perfecting the early rockets, including Dr. Wernher Von Braun, a brilliant rocket scientist. The hardware and personnel were transferred to the United States where our own Pershing Missile was designed from the V-2 prototype. The test flights of the missile were carried out from installations at Fort Bliss with a destination or impact zone near Green River, Utah.
The missile that very nearly struck Creede had been launched by a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) crew, so we were told, and the explosives package to destroy the missile if it went astray had, inadvertently, been left at the pad. The last blips of the tracking device indicated the missile had veered off course and was speeding right for the little town of Creede, Colorado. The "destroy" button was pushed to no avail and there was much concern among military personnel conducting the launch that Creede would have a space-age intruder as a monument.
A helicopter with soldiers was brought in to search the upper reaches of Willow, Rat and Miners Creeks after questioning those of us who had heard the second explosion of impact. The search was called off after two weeks of crisscrossing the prime area with no visible signs of fresh earth scattered over snow.
In spring, Inez and I were back at Bondholder working on completion of a tunnel and prospecting West near the head of Mineral Creek where I had staked ten lode claims on promising structures. Homestake Mining Company had employed Maurice Chaffee who chose the Creede District as his thesis area to complete schooling for his Master's degree in geology. Maurice would be driven near the continental divide on the Creede side to begin mapping and would work down the north slopes to our home and spend the night with Inez and me, waiting for a ride back to repeat the process. In the course of his work we exchanged geologic data and I directed him to relevant outcrops. As he checked my recent staking he spotted what he thought was one of my prospect pits and worked his way to it. He was surprised to find pieces of twisted metal and electrical debris. Maurice Chaffee had found the errant Pershing missile. Tommy Phillips, Creede's Marshal, and maintenance man, was whisked in by helicopter with the town's metal detector to pinpoint the location of the nose cone which was nearly eighteen feet deep and in a reverse direction from its flight path. It was removed in all secrecy and transported to its home base at Fort Bliss. For my benefit, I had a discovery hole containing vanadium, titanium, tungsten and copper in anomalous amounts with traces of gold and silver, enough to excite any prospector.
At a later date I returned to the site and gathered enough scrap metal, small gears and other debris to fill a small canvas bag. As it is now classified a wilderness area, the other metals will remain in place.
The reward for finding the missile enabled Maurice Chaffee to complete his schooling and at last report he was working for the U. S. Geological Survey in its Denver office.