For sale: former missile silo in New Mexico desert

New Mexico

PAST the city limits, where the main street with the UFO museum and the McDonald's in the shape of a flying saucer gives way to a lonely highway coursing through an ocean of scrubby terrain, the green door pops up like a periscope.

Jim Moore, a real estate agent in New Mexico, sells mostly ranch houses in tidy neighbourhoods or stretches of undeveloped land in a place where that is abundant. But for some reason, he said, when an odd listing comes around, it tends to fall to him. And on a recent morning, he pulled off the highway onto a gravel path leading straight to his latest example.

The 10-hectare parcel, a 32km drive from the city's downtown, has a worn trailer where the former owner lived and then that green door, which opens on a stairwell heading deep underground. There, visitors who do not fear enclosed spaces will find a marvel of military architecture that has had Mr Moore's…