Rocket Garden: Space Shuttle Booster

Corinne, Utah

Rockets are large and combustible, so it's prudent to build them in the middle of nowhere -- and the high desert of Utah is one of those nowhere places. That's where you'll find the rocket and missile garden outside the Northrop Grumman plant near Corinne. Nearly 40 different examples of military and space supersonic hardware are on display, free and open to the public, including the largest single item, a 150-foot-long solid fuel rocket booster for the Space Shuttle (The plant used to be owned by Morton Thiokol, builder of the booster that blew up the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 -- the same year that the rocket garden opened).

There are Minuteman and Patriot missiles, an Atlas rocket, and less-well-known military munitions such as Minotaur, Maverick, and Antares missiles. Signs explain everything. Visitors can sometimes see billows of smoke rising in the desert, miles away, when the company test-fires an engine.