Nevada Test Site
Nye County, Nye County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Nevada Test Site. 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.
Erected by Nevada State Historic Preservation Office
The Story
Chosen in 1950 as the nation's continental proving ground, the Nevada Test Site sprawls across 1,350 square miles of isolated desert flats where nuclear devices were detonated for defense and other purposes beginning with the first test on Frenchman Flat in January 1951. It became the country's principal nuclear-explosives testing laboratory and one of the most vivid landscapes of the Cold War. Beneath that atomic history lies far deeper time: archaeology reveals some 9,500 years of continuous human occupation, most recently by the Southern Paiute.
Why it matters
Few places make the Cold War as tangible as this scarred desert, where America pursued the atomic arms race atop land that people had called home for nearly ten millennia.
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Related events
- · Cold War
Themes & tags
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