Beginning in 1959 the Department of Defense renovated the Schilling Air Force Base in Salina, Kansas, to accommodate a new generation of bombers and tankers and to host a 12-silo Atlas missile complex. Utah Construction & Mining and its partners won some $23 million in contracts to build the complex. One company historian noted that, on Cold War projects, they worked under "combat-speed conditions." Meanwhile Utah Construction's namesake state bustled with military projects, from Thiokol in Brigham City, to Boeing at Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, to Hercules Powder Company in Magna. Time magazine reported: "Strange lights glare in the night, making the mountains shine, and a grumbling roar rolls across the desert. By day enormous clouds of steam-white smoke billow up... and drift over hills and valleys. Monstrous vehicles with curious burdens lumber along the roads."