The First Atomic Test
On Monday morning July 16, 1945, the world was changed forever when the first atomic bomb was tested in an isolated area of the New Mexico desert. Conducted in the final month of World War II by the top-secret Manhattan Engineering District, this test was code named Trinity. The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, about 230 miles south of the Manhattan Project's headquarters at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today this 3,200 square mile range, partly located in the desolate Jornada del Muerto Valley, is named the White Sands Missile Range and is actively used for non-nuclear weapons testing.
Before the war the range had been public and private grazing land that ...
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of this remote location in the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) Valley for the Trinity test was from an initial list of eight possible test sites. Besides the Jornada, three of the other seven sites were also located in New Mexico: the Tularosa Basin near Alamogordo, the lava beds (now the El Malpais National Monument) south of Grants, and an area southwest of Cuba and north of Thoreau. Other possible sites not located in New Mexico were: an Army training area north of Blythe, California, in the Mojave Desert; San Nicolas Island (one of the Channel Islands) off the coast of Southern California; and on Padre Island south of Corpus Christi, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico. The last choice was in the beautiful San Luis Valley of south central Colorado, new today's Great Sand Dunes National Monument.
Based on a number of criteria that included availability, distance from Los Alamos, good weather, few or no settlements, and that no Indian land be seized, the choices for the test site ...
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considered New Mexico to include most of North America west of the Mississippi! The Camino Real went north from Mexico City till it joined the Rio Grande near El Paso. Then the trail followed the river valley further north to a point where the river curved to the west, and its valley narrowed and became impassable for wagons. To avoid this obstacle, the supply wagons from Mexico took the dubious detour due north across the Jornada del Muerto. Sixty miles of desert, very little water, and numerous hostile Apaches. Hence the name Jornada del Muerto, which roughly translates as the journey of death.
The origin of the code name Trinity for the test site is also interesting, and a ...
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The First Atomic Test. (2007, October 11). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-First-Atomic-Test/72561
"The First Atomic Test." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 11 Oct. 2007. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-First-Atomic-Test/72561>
"The First Atomic Test." Essayworld.com. October 11, 2007. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-First-Atomic-Test/72561.
"The First Atomic Test." Essayworld.com. October 11, 2007. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-First-Atomic-Test/72561.
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