For sale: Two never-used Air Force missile launch sites on 40-acre plots in northwestern South Dakota.

The U.S. government has the areas on the auction block - one north of Belle Fourche and another north of Newell - through the Office of Property Disposal in the U.S. General Services Administration.

M-04 is a former Minuteman II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Launch Facility located about 21 miles north of Belle Fourche off of Old Highway 85. Another 40-acre site, N-02, is 9.5 miles north of Newell.

Other silo sites throughout western South Dakota reverted to the original private landowners when Ellsworth Air Force Base's missile program was deactivated. The last of the 150 missiles in the 44th Missile Wing at Ellsworth was removed in April 1994.

But these two parcels of land never held missile silos, according to Douglas Flanders of the GSA. They are nothing but raw land that served as buffer zones. Buyers won't even get a hole in the ground, since the Air Force never used these two parcels for anything.

"Special legislation did allow for private-owned land to revert back," Flanders said. "However, when these 40 acres were originally acquired, they were Bureau of Land Management public land that the Air Force acquired."

Officials recently told the GSA that the BLM does not want the land back, Flanders said.

Interested buyers have until Monday, July 14, to make an offer by sealed bid. As of close of business Wednesday, there were no offers.

That's no surprise to area rancher Dan Connor, who doesn't expect a bidding war to break out over the parcel of land a few miles from his Belle Fourche ranch.

"Forty acres sitting out in the middle of nowhere's not worth much," Connor said. Butte County already has a considerable amount of BLM-owned land that is leased by ranchers for grazing rights, he said. BLM officials at the Belle Fourche office were unavailable Wednesday for comment.

Ronald Steineke of Hartford raises cattle on the ranch land that surrounds the M-04 site but said Tuesday that he didn't know anything about the GSA surplus property auction.