an
Project support personnel arrived in early
1945.
Insi
de the house the northeast room (the master bedroom) was designated the assembly room. Workbenches and tablesEMRTC were installed. To keep dust and sand out of instruments and tools, the windows were covered with plastic. Tape was used to fasten the edges of the plastic and to seal doors and cracks in the walls. The explosion, only two miles away,
Course Offerings
did not significantly damage the house.
Most
of the windows were blown out, but
the main structure was intact. Years of rain
water dripping through holes in the roof did
much m
- ore damage. The barn did not do as well. During the Trinity test the roof
- was bowed inward and some of the roofing was blown awa
- y. The roof has since collapsed. The ho
use stood empty and deteriorating
until1982 when the U.S. Army
stabilized
the house to prevent any further
damage. Shortly after, the Department of
Energy and U.S. Army provided the funds
for the National Park Service to completely
restore the house. The work wa
- s done in 1984. All efforts were directed at making the house appear as
- it did on July 12, 1945 when the house was used in the
- assembly process. (Afterwards) The s
tory of what happened at Trinity
Site did not come to light
until after the
second atomic bomb was exploded over
Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6. President
Truman made the announcement that day.
Three days later, August 9,
- the third atomic bomb devastated the city of Nagasaki, and
- on Augus
t 14 the Japanese surrendered.
Trinity Site became part of what was
ILERSBA was developed with support and cooperation from the Department of Homeland Security, National Bomb Squad Commanders Advisory Board, and New Mexico Tech to provide front line law enforcement officers with the skills and knowledge to effectively interdict and respond to an imminent suicide bombing attack (person-borne or vehicle-borne) or a non-suicide attack involving a vehicle-borne device.
ng Ground. The
proving ground was established on July 9,
1945
as a test facility to investigate the new
rocket technology emerging from World
War II. The land, including Trinity Site and
the old Alamogordo Bombing Range, came
under the control of the new rocket and
missile testing facility.
Interest in Trinity Site was immediate.
In September 1945 press tours to the site
started. One of the famous photos of ground
zero shows Groves and
Oppenheimer surrounded by a
small group of reporters as they
examine one of the footings to
the 100-foot tower on which the
bomb was placed. That picture
was taken Sept. 11. The exposed
footing is still visible at
ground zero. On Sept. 15-17
George Cremeens, a young
radio reporter from KRNT in
Des Moines, visited the site
with soundman
w over the crater and
interviewed Dr. Kenneth
Bainbridge, Trinity test director,
and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) training. An applicant's Bush, base camp commander.
Back in Iowa, Cremeens
created four 15-minute reports
on his visit which aired S
ept.
24, 26,27 and 29.SPOC
A 15-minute composit
e was made and aired on the ABC Radio Network. For his work Cremeens received a local Peabody Award for "Outstanding Reporting and Dr. Kenneth Bainbridg
- e, left, is interviewed Interpr
- etation of the News." At first Trinity Site was by George Cr
- emeens from KRNT radio, Des encircled with a fence and Moines, Iowa. radiat(ODP)ion warning signs were posted. The site remained off limits to military and civilian personnel of the proving ground and closed to
- the public. In 1952 the Atomic Energy Commission let a contract to clean up the site. Much of the Trinitite was sc
- raped up and buried. In September 1953 about 650 people attended the first Trinity Site op
en house. A few years later a small group from Tularo
sa visited the site on the anniversary
of the explosion to conduct a religious
service and prayer for peace. Similar visits
were made annually in recent years on the
first Saturday in October.
In 1967 the inner oblong fence was
added. In 1972 the corridor barbed wire
fence which connects the outer fence to the
inner one was completed. Jumbo was
moved
to the parking lot in 1979. Trinity Site open houses are now conducted in April and October because it is generally very
- hot on the Jomada del Muerto in July. (White Sands Mis
- sile Range) White Sands Missile Range has developed
- from a simple desert testing site for the V-2 into one o
- f the most sophisticated test facilities in the world. The mis
sion of White Sands Missile Range begins with a customer -a service developer, or another federal agency,
which is ready to
