For over fifty years, something rather unexpected has cast quite the shadow on the landscape of Cavalier County. Nestled amongst fields of wheat, sugar beets, and potato stands a giant concrete pyramid with a unique past.

The story begins in the spring of 1970, during the height of the Cold War, when the small town of Nekoma, North Dakota became the site of a massive military installation. Built at a cost of six billion dollars, the site was a sprawling complex of missile silos and a huge pyramid-shaped radar system that was a key part of the nuclear defense system of the Cold War. The pyramid was responsible for housing the men and equipment that protected the Grand Forks Air Base missile field from possible attacks by the Soviets. The Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Complex was the only one of its kind and became operational in April of 1975, but it was only in use for eight months before it was deactivated. Today, the huge concrete pyramid with its three-foot thick walls remains, though now it stands in the heart of another project, a wind farm.

With just over 130 wind turbines, the Langdon Wind Energy Center was built in 2008 by FPL Energy in conjunction with Minnkota Power Cooperative of Grand Forks and Otter Tail Power Company of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. At full capacity, the wind farm is capable of powering almost 50,000 homes and is one of the largest in North Dakota.