Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex / Cavalier County, North Dakota

The Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in Cavalier County, North Dakota, is the focus of an amazing set of images hosted by the US Library of Congress, showing this squat and evocative megastructure in various states of construction and completion. It’s a huge pyramid in the middle of nowhere tracking the end of the world on radar, an abstract geometric shape beneath the sky without a human being in sight, or it could even be the opening scene of an apocalyptic science fiction film—but it’s just the US military going about its business, building vast and other-worldly architectural structures that the civilian world only rarely sees — via BLDGBLOG

Photo: Benjamin Halpern, courtesy of the US Library of Congress