Trinity Site (Shallow Thoughts)

Trinity Site

Last year in April, Dave and I finally got around to driving down for Trinity Site day.

Trinity Site is where the Manhattan Project scientists detonated the first prototype for the "Fat Man" plutonium atomic bomb that would eventually be dropped on Nagasaki.

Trinity Site is technically part of the National Park Service, but it's located on White Sands Missile Range and therefore is closed to the public most of the time. They open it two days a year, usually the first Saturday in April and the third Saturday in October — except that this year's April opening was canceled for unspecified reasons, and apparently they're going to cancel the April opening, leaving only October. This year it's October 21.

They open Stallion Gate, off highway 380, at 8am. We had stayed overnight in Soccorro, woke up early and got to the gate not much later than 8; there was a long line of cars parked on the highway waiting to go in. Eventually someone opened the gate and the procession started moving. It's still a considerable distance to the site, about 17 miles, and the line of cars crawls, so it takes quite a while to reach the parking area.

There's a free handout that's quite informative. I thought I was fairly well read on the Manhattan Project and Trinity, but there were several tidbits I hadn't read elsewhere. There are also lots of detailed signs scattered about the site.

like the one about Jumbo, a large container with 15-inch thick steel walls, originally designed to contain the first atomic bomb test, but not actually used for that purpose (it would have been vaporized by the blast). Jumbo was later used to contain conventional explosions, and had its ends blown off in the process, but you can still see what's left of it.

Ground Zero is marked with an obelisk of basalt rocks, flanked by a few enigmatic rebar structures marking holes in the ground. There's nothing much to see, but it's sobering to know the history of where you're standing.

The area around Ground Zero is fenced off, and there's a series of interesting signs along the fence telling the story of the people involved in the test.

I recommend bringing your own lunch (we did). There's a food truck but the lines are very long.

By the way, staying in Soccorro the night before turned out to be a great idea, because we finally made it to the rock museum at New Mexico Tech. We'd tried before but always when it was closed. It's a wonderful museum if you have even the slightest interest in geology, and the break area outside is almost as interesting as the museum itself: the geologists at NM Tech have scattered interesting rocks all over.

But it's particularly relevant if you're about to visit Trinity Site. Inside the museum, they have several examples of trinitite, the (not always) green glass that was created when the Trinity test fused rock at ground zero. It has a wide range of appearances, and seeing them in the museum can be helpful if you want to look for trinitite "in the wild" at the site. (But be warned, it's illegal to take any home! If you find any, just look, then put it back where you found it. We found a few pieces that might have been trinitite but nothing that we were sure of.

The Trinity Site open house was an enjoyable trip and I recommend it if you're anywhere near the area on the October opening. This year, it will be October 21, 2023.

Some links:

• White Sands Missile Range's official page
• White Sands National Park's page (and if you haven't been to White Sands, consider visiting while you're in the area — it's spectacular)
• Wikipedia's Trinity Site page