Project Gutenberg's Trinity [Atomic Test] Site, by The National Atomic Museum

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Title: Trinity [Atomic Test] Site
The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb

Author: The National Atomic Museum

Release Date: June 29, 2008 [EBook #277]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRINITY [ATOMIC TEST] SITE ***

Produced by Gregory Walker

TRINITY SITE

by the U.S. Department of Energy

National Atomic Museum,

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Contents:

The First Atomic Test.
Jumbo.
Schmidt-McDonald Ranch House.
Notes.
Bibliography.
The National Atomic Museum.

THE FIRST ATOMIC TEST

On Monday morning July 16, 1945, the world was changed forever when
the first atomic bomb was tested in an isolated area of the New Mexico
desert. Conducted in the final month of World War II by the top-secret
Manhattan Engineer District, this test was code named Trinity. The
Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range,
about 230 miles south of the Manhattan Project's headquarters at Los
Alamos, New Mexico. Today this 3,200 square mile range, partly located
in the desolate Jornada del Muerto Valley, is named the White Sands
Missile Range and is actively used for non-nuclear weapons testing.

Before the war the range was mostly public and private grazing land
that had always been sparsely populated. During the war it was even
more lonely and deserted because the ranchers had agreed to vacate their
homes in January 1942. They left because the War Department wanted the
land to use as an artillery and bombing practice area. In September
1944, a remote 18 by 24 square mile portion of the north-east corner
of the Bombing Range was set aside for the Manhattan Project and the
Trinity test by the military.

The selection of this remote location in the Jornada del Muerto Valley
for the Trinity test was from an initial list of eight possible test
sites. Besides the Jornada, three of the other seven sites were also
located in New Mexico: the Tularosa Basin near Alamogordo, the lava
beds (now the El Malpais National Monument) south of Grants, and an area
so