“This is a filter. It’s an open-source museum,” says John DePerro, chief curator of the Cold War Museum in Vint Hill, just outside Gainesville. By that he means it’s a collection of artifacts, photographs and information brought to them unsolicited by visitors who often begin a conversation with, “I have something in my basement you might be interested in.”
The escalating tensions among governments of the East and the West known as the Cold War continued for a long time, from 1947 to 1991, and involved thousands of overt and covert operatives around the world. It’s not surprising that some antique remnants of their clandestine activities are gathering dust in closets and cellars, freshly declassified, politically and militarily harmless and ready for public display.
But where to put it? For about 15 years the museum was virtual—online only—with a mobile unit for U-2 tours to other museums.
How about a 150-year-old horse barn off the main highway between Gainesville and Warrenton? The significance of Vint Hill goes beyond its convenience to the museum-going public of Washington, D.C., and the tourists soaking in the region’s Colonial and Civil War history.
“The Sunday after Pearl Harbor,” DePerro says, “the farmer who owned this land called the Pentagon and said, ‘You know I can hear Berlin radio here?’”
Vint Hill, it turns out, is a unique geological glitch, a quiet zone, one of two in the country, DePerro says, and it wasn’t long before the U.S. Army took possession of the 695-acre farm and turned it into a classified listening post, with a 250-acre antenna array, schools for Morse code transcribers and cryptography and, eventually, visits by the nascent National Security Agency and the CIA.
The two-level museum does a good job of honoring the soldiers of the Cold War, the men and women who more often than not worked anonymously and in the background to preserve global and national security as post-World War II governments rattled atomic-laden sabers and talked openly about nuclear annihilation.
The two-hour guided tour is revelatory, as it raises awareness as to what went on and reminds us of the contribution these unheralded soldiers made. But it’s truly frightening to find out how many times nuclear weapons were nearly launched, accidentally or otherwise.
There’s an atomic bomb section, a civil defense section (remember fallout shelters?), an Iron Curtain section, an exhibit on aerial photography and a history of the farm and the subsequent military activity there.
Upstairs is an array of vintage uniforms, both good guys and those considered the enemy, and, for a bit of a breather, there’s a short talk about Area 51, which takes the Cold War into outer space with questions about UFOs and aliens, as well as a discussion of stealth bombers and smart bombs.
The most revered artifact, DePerro says, is a piece of the U-2 flown by Rudolf Anderson Jr. when he was shot down over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His was the only fatality in the crisis.
The Cold War Museum is at 7142 Lineweaver Road in Vint Hill; call 540-341-2008 for information. The hours are Saturdays 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sundays 1-4 p.m. and other hours by appointment. Contact Executive Director Jason Hall at [email protected] for an appointment.
READ MORE about the Cold War Museum and Francis Gary Powers Jr.’s effort to document his father’s legacy in the May 1, 1960, shoot-down of his jet by Soviet missiles and his subsequent capture.
