resting
to note that in the late 16th century, the Spanish considered their
province of New Mexico to include most of North America west of the
Mississippi!

The origin of the code name Trinity for the test site is also
interesting, but the true source is unknown. One popular account
attributes the name to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific head of the
Manhattan Project. According to this version, the well read Oppenheimer
based the name Trinity on the fourteenth Holy Sonnet by John Donne, a
16th century English poet and sermon writer. The sonnet started, "Batter
my heart, three-personed God."[2] Another version of the name's origin
comes from University of New Mexico historian Ferenc M. Szasz. In his
1984 book, The Day the Sun Rose Twice, Szasz quotes Robert W. Henderson
head of the Engineering Group in the Explosives Division of the
Manhattan Project. Henderson told Szasz that the name Trinity came from
Major W. A. (Lex) Stevens. According to Henderson, he and Stevens were
at the test site discussing the best way to haul Jumbo (see below) the
thirty miles from the closest railway siding to the test site. "A devout
Roman Catholic, Stevens observed that the railroad siding was called
'Pope's Siding.' He [then] remarked that the Pope had special access to
the Trinity, and that the scientists would need all the help they could
get to move the 214 ton Jumbo to its proper spot."[3]

The Trinity test was originally set for July 4, 1945. However, final
preparations for the test, which included the assembly of the bomb's
plutonium core, did not begin in earnest until Thursday, July 12. The
abandoned George McDonald ranch house located two miles south of the
test site served as the assembly point for the device's core. After
assembly, the plutonium core was transported to Trinity Site to be
inserted into the thing or gadget as the atomic device was called. But,
on the first attempt to insert the core it stuck! After letting the
temperatures of the core and the gadget equalize, the core fit perfectly
to the great relief of all present. The completed device was raised
to the top of a 100-foot steel tower on Saturday, July 14. During this
process workers piled up mattresses beneath the gadget to cushion
a possible fall. When the bomb reached the top of the tower without
mishap, installation of the explosive detonators began. The 100-foot
tower (a surplus Forest Service fire-watch tower) was designated Point
Zero. Ground Zero