Trinity Test Site

USA / New Mexico / Socorro /
 military, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, nuclear testing area, historic landmark
The "Trinity" test was the first test of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945 thirty miles (48 km) southeast of Socorro on what is now White Sands Missile Range, headquartered near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was a test of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, the same type of weapon later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The detonation was equivalent to the explosion of around 20 kilotons of TNT, and is usually credited as the beginning of the Atomic Age.

The crater is aproximately 900 m (2953 ft) wide.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   33°40'38"N   106°28'32"W

Comments

  • Wish I could see the place. Great historical importance. Shows that determination and imagination can overcome big difficulties in progress of science and technology.
  • I've been there, they let visitors in twice a year. It's very impressive, though the crater's long since been filled in the inner fence marks it's boundaries. And that was a LITTLE one.
  • When I was there it was obvious that the ground appeared to have been hit with a big boxing glove as the entire area appeared to have been a crater. Bear in mind when visiting today, most of it has had a few inches of burned sand and ground peeled away, along with a covering of Trinitite glassy sand. There is a covered are where some Trinitite has been preserved in its nearly natural state as it is radioactive. I went there on a Press tour and was advised that I could only be inside the fence for 30 minutes. My somewhat cocky guide told me he had been inside for about six hours. I was not too surprised when he died a decade later. My Dad worked on the bomb in some minor capacity as a uranium prospector, and that experience plus being at Bikini killed him at age 61. Let it be known that no Bikini veteran is alive today.
  • There was no crater to fill in.
  • Moreton Marsh, It did leave a small crater.
This article was last modified 12 years ago