Trinity Site and more

Saturday, April 6

Warning--this is a long post, but this is why we traveled to New Mexico and I have been having fun browsing through many online sites. 

New battery for Geojeep - Thank you, AutoZone

Today was the scheduled bi-annual (first Saturday in April and first Saturday in October) open house at the Trinity Site, ground zero for the detonation of the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945.  There were two ways to access the site on the White Sands Missile Range, either be part of the caravan from Alamogordo (shorter round trip, but must enter and leave with the caravan) or enter off of US 380 just east of San Antonio, NM (Stallion Gate).  So that we could come and go as we wanted, we chose to enter via the Stallion Gate.  That was the reason for staying in Socorro last night.  The Stallion Gate was scheduled to open at 8 a.m. and the plan was to be in line when they opened.  We were up early, got the Jeep loaded, and were ready to set off for breakfast with plenty of time to spare for the 22 mile trip to Stallion Gate.

Houston, we have a problem.  Geojeep barely started.  We drove around a little, hoping to recharge the battery, then parked at McDonald's to grab a quick breakfast.  We went back to the Jeep, but now the battery was completely dead.  Socorro is not tiny, but it is definitely small and it was not at all obvious where (or if) we could get auto repair early on a Saturday morning.  We asked several folks in town where we might be able to get a battery replaced.  There were multiple suggestions for AutoZone.  I always thought of AutoZone as only a parts store, but fortunately it was only half a block away.  The Frog was there at 8 when they opened and sure enough they indicated they could switch out the battery.  We got the Jeep jumped (we have a portable jump starter that lives in the Jeep) and limped into AutoZone's parking lot in front of the store.  The very nice young parts manager could not have been any nicer and we were on our way by 8:30 or so.    To our great relief we were back on track and only an hour behind our original plan, although a bit lighter in the wallet. Thank you, AutoZone!!

Trinity Site open house

We quickly made it to the turnoff to Stallion Gate.  The actual gate, along with a water tower and a cluster of military buildings, is another five miles from the highway turnoff.  As we approached the gate, there were only half a dozen cars and a bus in front of us in line.  We were first approached by an enthusiastic volunteer who gave us a package of materials, including info about Trinity Site, directions, and rules for entering White Sands Missile Range.   Entrance is free, but admission was being closely monitored.  Most notable among the rules: no straying from the 17-mile assigned route to Ground Zero (there were either guards or barriers at the few intersections along the way, so there was not much chance of that) and no photography except at Ground Zero.  We then inched our way forward to the military policeman.  We apparently did not fit his profile for trouble makers.  He checked each of us against our drivers license pictures, then sent us on our way. 

It took awhile to complete the entire 17 mile route, made longer by the relatively slow speed limit, but it was an easy trip on a well-maintained, paved road.  Due to the restrictions, we have no pictures.  In reality, there was very little to photograph anyway.  Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a lot of nothing here.  It is a broad, flat and very dry valley with mountains to the east.  One thing that did catch our eye was an unusual animal caution sign....the typical yellow diamond with a picture of the animal, but we did not recognize the animal.  We had seen many such signs for deer all across the country and elk or moose in selected areas, but these looked different.  These looked like deer with longer straight horns.  Only later did we find out that the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish had introduced exotic African oryx into this region many years ago and they are now fairly common in some areas.

When we arrived at Ground Zero about 9:30, the large parking lot already had hundreds of cars with license plates from a broad range of states.  Ground Zero is about a quarter mile walk from the parking lot, with actually very little at the explosion site.  The site is not much of a crater, but more a depression about four feet deep and 240 feet in diameter.   (Some accounts talk about the crater being as much as ten feet deep immediately after the blast.)  There is a commemorative monument at the location of the 100 foot steel tower that held the bomb, a few interpretive signs on the chain-link fence encircling the site, and a small building to one side, mostly buried and not open to the public, which preserves the only part of the site that was not later bulldozed by the military.  The heat of the blast (average fireball temperature was estimated to be 14,710 degrees F) vaporized the tower, but some of the footers are still visible.

It is impossible to appreciate the intensity of the explosion.  The blast broke windows 120 miles away and was felt 160 miles away.  Despite that, there was very little information shared about the blast at the time it happened.  The Wikipedia description about the test notes the following:

"The Alamogordo Air Base issued a 50-word press release in response to what it described as "several inquiries" that had been received concerning an explosion. The release explained that "a remotely located ammunitions magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded," but that "there was no loss of life or limb to anyone." A newspaper article published the same day stated that "the blast was seen and felt throughout an area extending from El Paso to Silver City, Gallup, Socorro, and Albuquerque."[44] An Associated Press article quoted a blind woman 150 miles (240 km) away who asked "What's that brilliant light?" Such articles appeared in New Mexico, but East coast newspapers ignored them."

It was only after a bomb was detonated in Hiroshima at 8:15 am (Hiroshima time) on August 6, that a more accurate description of the test at Trinity became public.  For example, see the August 6 edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican shown below and displayed on the fence at the Trinity Site.

Image of August 6 paper on the fence at Trinity Site

Blow up of the right hand side of the August 6 paper showing an article about the test at Trinity Site which had occurred three weeks earlier, but publicly described at the time as an ammunition dump explosion

By the way, one of the better descriptions of the history and events surrounding Trinity Site that I have stumbled upon so far is from the text of a visitors pamphlet for the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It is available here on online.  In reading that description, I was surprised to see that among the eight final sites considered for the blast were the Malpais lava beds in New Mexico (now the Valley of Fires Recreational Area, see yesterday's post), Padre Island south of Corpus Christi, and San Nicolas Island (one of the Channel Islands) off the coast of California.  The first choice was actually in the Mojave Desert north of Blythe, CA.  

Trinitite samples

The heat of the blast melted the sand and turned it into a green glassy substance known as trinitite.  The military removed most of the trinitite years ago.  However, I talked to a man (I did not ask, but I think he was a grad student or young faculty member) with a geiger counter talking about small pieces of trinitite on the ground that were obvious once you knew to look for them.  The radioactivity of the samples was higher than background, but not greatly radioactive.  While I was watching, he measured 700 cpm with his uncalibrated counter for the relatively large (half inch) piece he found on the ground vs a 'background' of 200 cpm in the parking lot. 

Both in the information handed out upon entry and on signs on the fences, it was clear that taking samples of trinitite from the site was illegal and punishable with jail time.  However, it was legal to collect trinitite prior to the site's designation as a national historic landmark.  There is a lot of folklore on the internet, including discussions about the sale of fake trinitite, but this report seems pretty common and at least believable:

"Detailed report records show that the ground zero and the trinite mass was quickly surrounded by a fence. So soon was the erection that a number of the fence builders were exposed to 10R or more during the effort. In 1945, site entrance was logged man by man and only badged, specially authorized personnel were allowed within the fenced perimeter. No one else not even guard were allowed near even the outer fence perimeter until 1946!! The trinity site still had over 200 personnel there until late 1946. There was a 24-7 mounted guard unit assigned to the fence perimeter until late 1946 and a daylight 10 hour mounted perimeter guard to the fence into early 1947. By February 1947 there were no personnel remaining in the vicinty of Trinity. Spot checks by guard units continued until 1950. At that time the site was religated to just another part of the bombing range and was left unguarded. It still had the high barbed wire topped perimeter fence and fully paddlocked single gate entrance, however. It was in this time frame that Ralph Pray in July of 1951, liberated the only known major removal of trinitite that would find itself released completely into the public domain.The federal authorities learned that trinitite was being sold and hung out around Sante-Fe rock and mineral dealers trying to locate the source. Un-successful at their task, the government bulldozed the site and buried, at an undisclosed location, the bulk of the remaining material. In the 1970's a second much more thorough and detailed sanitization to the site took place to make way for its National Historic Monument status."

Here is a link to the story of how Ralph Pray, referred to in the quote above, took it upon himself to remove most of the trinitite surreptitiously.  I also  found at least one first hand report that as late as the 1960's, trinitite was common enough that it was available for sale as a curiosity from Edmund Scientific. 

Whatever actually happened, trinitite is no longer easily available.  Not to be deterred, we followed signs of "Trinitite for Sale" to the Blanchard Rock Shop, an interesting place in its own right.  It is in Bingham, NM, 16 miles north of the Trinity Site on US 380.  According to the current owner, the former owner (Sam Jones?) had collected the trinitite while it was still legal.  Their current limited supply was not cheap, but we came away with a fairly nice size piece of what they claim is trinitite. Is it real?  I hope so.  When I have a chance I will at least take it to someone with a geiger counter and see if we can detect any radioactivity.

Trinitite sample purchased at Blanchard Rock Shop on US 380 north of Trinity Site

Trinitite sample (removed from bag, showing reverse side).  
Note the surface of tan colored sand rather than the green color of the top side

It was nearing lunch and we still had much to do.  We climbed back into Geojeep with our new found treasures and headed east on US 380, now aiming for the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.