I just returned to Phoenix an hour ago after driving back from Alamogordo, New Mexico, not too far from the Trinity Site. Here I am, actually standing at the REAL Ground Zero. Most of the time I was there, I was at a loss for words.
Report Continues....
I got to Alamogordo, New Mexico at about 3:30 PM MDT on Friday. It’s a small military town (DUHHHHHH!), home to Holloman AFB and White Sands Missile Range, and also very close to White Sands National Monument. The vast majority of businesses are located along White Sands Boulevard (US 70 North). It also has an offshoot campus of New Mexico State University in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains, as well as the New Mexico Museum of Space History and Clyde W. Tombaugh IMAX Theater.
There is a small mall across the main drag from the motel where I stayed. And it sure sucked to be Cingular, because my cell phone had no service from WSMR northward! Sprint was there and so was Verizon, but not Cingular. Oh well.
The tour assembled at 0630 hours at the parking lot of Tularosa High School, about 12 miles north of Alamogordo. I got the last reserved seat on the Tour bus which was first in line of the caravan. Breakfast was served by the Alamogordo Lions. As we pulled away at 0800 with WSMR Police escort, I turned back and saw well over a hundred vehicles, ready to pull away.
The trip to the Site took an hour and a half, and no pictures were allowed because we were on the Missile Range. The first place we pulled into (actually, after the driver missed the turnoff, then had to double back from the parking lot) was the McDonald Ranch House, two miles southeast of Ground Zero, where the plutonium core was assembled. While the windows shattered and the roof was torn off, the main structure of the house survived the test, and was restored to its prior condition in 1984.
Jumbo, or what’s left of it, sat in the parking lot, just outside the main gate. This was to have been used if The Gadget fizzled, preventing the wide dispersal of plutonium over the area. As the calculations became more accurate, the decision was made not to use it, and it was placed 800 yards away, held by a steel tower which was vaporized by the test. Jumbo itself survived.
It was a quarter-mile walk in near-freezing temperatures (I later found out from one of the police officers there that the day I got there, it was 80 degrees!) and blustery skies. The obelisk was there, a twelve-foot-high silent reminder of what humankind is capable of given the impetus. Adjacent to the obelisk was the one remaining tower remnant which survived the blast.
Along the perimeter were photos of what the scientists and military personnel stationed there did to pass the time (these will be shown later in the gallery). There was a group of Japanese visitors from Tokyo who were taking photographs of these, as I was; one of them even had a 35mm panoramic camera...so that had to have been old!
They also had the Fat Man bomb casing there, a replica of the device used on Nagasaki. One guy (NOT me!) actually got up on top of the thing and whooped it up. In a macabre fashion I couldn’t resist so I yelled out “Look! It’s Major Kong!”
Finally, in the northwest corner near the perimeter, there was a covering of the original crater, with trinitite, where I had hoped to peek into. Unfortunately, sand has covered the trinitite, making it no longer visible. But it’s still there.
I went back to the obelisk one more time and prayed a simple prayer; that which Jesus Christ first taught to His disciples. And then I went back to the bus. All told, I spent a little over two hours at the site, the rest of the time warming up back in the bus. At 1230 hours we started back along the route we entered the site; on the return trip, they showed a DVD of the 1954 sci-fi classic ”Them!”...which supposedly took place in Alamogordo. Those of us sitting near the front gave it the MST3K treatment for its sexism and corny dialogue. We reached the parking lot at 1400, just as the US Army went into the LA drains, so we were “spared” of the result.
And that was it.
The Trinity Site stands as a silent reminder of what Humanity is capable of. No matter how one feels about the subject, this event must always be remembered. It is open to the public two days a year: the first Saturday in April, and the first Saturday in October (next date: October 6). There is no charge for the tour, but if you want to ride in style like I did, call the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce at (505) 437-6120 or (800) 826-0294. The $35 price is well worth it.
NOTE: More pictures from this visit will be posted in the Gallery section later in the week. Watch for them!
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