Nevada’s Nuclear Legacy and My Family’s Atomic Bonds

Touring the Nevada Test Site helped me understand my family’s contribution to America’s nuclear past

First U.S. nuclear field exercise conducted on land in November 1957. The people shown are 6 miles from the blast. Photo from Wikipedia (Public Domain).

The shuttle bus lurches to the right as we take a sharp turn off of Highway 95. Ahead of us is the badging office and the entry gates to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in Mercury, Nevada. It was once known as the Nevada Test Site and before that it was called the Nevada Proving Grounds.

Never heard of it? You might actually know a little something about this place. You see, there is this one little piece of land adjacent to the NNSS facility that gets a lot of attention. It’s called Area 51.

That infamous spot is only one small part of this enormous, desolate facility in the Nevada desert that measures roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island.

Chasing aliens is not why I boarded a shuttle bus an hour ago in North Las Vegas with a group of about thirty people. I’m here because of my job. We’re getting a tour and a history lesson about the primary testing location for America’s nuclear devices from 1951 to 1992.

We’ve all been pre-vetted before arrival but still have to go through the security song and dance at the badge office. We show identification, answer questions, and…