Site Today
In 1952, the site of the explosion was bulldozed, and the remaining trinitite was disposed of. On December 21, 1965, the 51,500-acre (20,800 ha) area Trinity Site was declared a National Historic Landmark district and, on October 15, 1966, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The landmark includes the base camp, where the scientists and support group lived; ground zero, where the bomb was placed for the explosion; and the Schmidt/McDonald ranch house, where the plutonium core to the bomb was assembled. Visitors to a Trinity Site open house are allowed to see the ground zero and ranch house areas. In addition, one of the old instrumentation bunkers is visible beside the road just west of ground zero.
In September 1953, about 650 people attended the first Trinity Site open house. In recent years, the site has been opened for public visits twice each year, on the first Saturdays in April and October.
In 1967, the inner oblong fence was added. In 1972, the corridor barbed wire fence that connects the outer fence to the inner one was completed. Jumbo was moved to the parking lot in 1979.
More than sixty years after the test, residual radiation at the site measured about ten times higher than normal. The amount of radioactive exposure received during a one-hour visit to the site is about half of the total radiation exposure which a U.S. adult receives on an average day from natural and medical sources. The Trinity monument, a rough-sided, lava-rock obelisk around 12 feet (3.65 m) high, marks the explosion's hypocenter, and Jumbo is still kept nearby.
On July 16, 2005, a special tour of the site was conducted to mark the 60th anniversary of the Trinity test, and hundreds (some news sources reported thousands) of visitors arrived to commemorate the occasion. The site is still a popular destination for those interested in atomic tourism, though it is only open to the public twice a year during open houses, on the first Saturdays of April and October.
Read more about this topic: Trinity (nuclear Test)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Give me today, for once, the worst throw of your dice, destiny. Today I transmute everything into gold.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)