This page features articles, posts, blurbs, and other informational pieces related to WSMR History. If you would like to submit an article to be published on our website, please send us an email at usarmy.wsmr.museum@mail.mil.

The 1983 War Scare
Some of the weapons tested at WSMR had a great impact not only for their military uses, but in a larger geopolitical context. One of these is the Pershing II missile and the role it played in the 1983 “War Scare.” Because of President Ronald Reagan’s heated anti-Soviet rhetoric, fears the Soviet Leadership and KGB had of an American first strike, and events of 1983, the US and USSR came closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Life at Los Alamos
By Darren Court, WSMR Museum Director/Curator

The V-2 Program: Operation Backfire to the Hermes Project
From the White Sands Missile Range Museum Archives

A Brief History of White Sands Proving Ground, 1941-1965
By Peter L. Eidenbach, Adjunct College Professor of Anthropology, New Mexico State University Alamogordo

Project Galileo Testing at White Sands Missile Range
From the White Sands Missile Range Museum Archives

Lure of Gold Leads Prospectors to Texas Canyon
By Jim Eckles, WSMR Public Affairs Office


The Hermes Program
By Darren Court, Museum Director/Curator and the WSMR Public Affairs Office

M712 Copperhead
By Jenn Jett, Museum Specialist

The Trinity Test Site
Compiled and Written by Gerry Veara, White Sands Missile Range Historical Foundation

A Brief History of Rocketry – Early Rockets to Goddard
By Darren Court, Museum Director/Curator


Von Braun, the V-2, and Slave Labor
By Darren Court, Museum Director/Curator