Trinity Site: 1945-1995.
Page: 12

the News."

At first Trinity Site was encircled with a fence and radiation 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 scraped up and buried. In September
1953 about 650 people attended the first Trinity Site open house. A
few years later a small group from Tularosa visited the site on an
anniversary of the explosion to conduct a religious service and
prayers for peace. Similar visits have been 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.

Visits to the site are now made in April and October because it is
generally so hot in July on the Jornada del Muerto.



White Sands Missile Range


White Sands Missile Range has developed from a simple desert testing
site for the V-2 into one of the most sophisticated test facilities in
the world. The mission of White Sands Missile Range begins with a
customer--a service developer, or another federal agency, which is
ready to find out if engineers and scientists have built something
which will perform according to job specifications. It ends when an
exhaustive series of tests has been completed and a data report has
been delivered to the customer.

Between the beginning and the end of the test program, be it the Army
Tactical Missile System or newly designed automobiles, range employees
are involved in every operation connected with the customer and his
product. The range can and does provide everything from rat traps to
telephones, from equipment hoists and flight safety to microsecond
timing.

We shake, rattle and roll the product, roast it, freeze it, subject it
to nuclear radiation, dip it in salt water and roll it in the mud. We
test its paint, bend its frame and find out what effect its propulsion
material has on flora and fauna.