Nevada Test Site

For decades the most consequential ground in Nevada was the part the public could not reach. Chosen in 1950 as the nation's continental proving ground, this thirteen-hundred-square-mile spread of desert flats saw its first nuclear detonation on Frenchman Flat in January 1951, and hundreds more followed, above ground and below. The mushroom clouds were visible from Las Vegas, sixty-five miles off. Beneath the Cold War surface lies a far older record: people lived and hunted across these valleys for ninety-five hundred years, the Southern Paiute most recently among them.

What the plaque says

Tests of devices for defense and for peaceful uses of nuclear explosives have been conducted here since the 1950s. The nation's principal nuclear explosives testing laboratory was located within this 1,350 square mile, geologically complex area in the isolated valleys of Jackass, Yucca, and Frenchman flats. Selected as the North American test site in 1950, the first test took place on Frenchman Flat in January 1951. Today, the Nevada Test Site is one of the nation's most important expressions of the Cold War. Archeological studies of the Nevada Test Site have revealed continuous occupation over the past 9,500 years. Several American Indian cultures are represented. Southern Paiutes were the most recent group to occupy the area.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Charleston & the Spring Mountains — 32 mi
  A nearly 12,000-foot sky island 35 miles from the Strip — alpine forest above the Mojave