If you had to compile a list of the most important events of the 20th century, what would it include? The World Wars? The Space Race? Perhaps the Civil Rights Movement or Great Depression?
All of these events are globally significant, but you could argue that their historical impact is dwarfed by the Fat Man and Little Boy. The advent of nuclear weapons and energy shaped the global course of the 20th century. Spread across three locations, Manhattan Project National Historical Park preserves the threads of history that wove together to produce the atomic bomb. Strangely, the one incredibly significant location is not included in the park: the Trinity Test site.
Trinity is located in New Mexico’s remote Tularosa Basin — and it would have made perfect sense as the focal point of Manhattan Project NHP. As it turns out, there was a movement to designate Atomic Bomb National Monument at Trinity within months of the July 16, 1945 test.
That movement failed. The reasons why are a fascinating look at the intricate inner workings of park-making.
The historic quality of Atomic Bomb National Monument?
Creating a new national park site is not a casual matter. When a park is proposed, it undergoes intense scrutiny to determine whether the resources to be protected are of high quality, national significance, and in need of federal protection.
In the case of Atomic Bomb National Monument, the latter two criteria made it an obvious candidate for NPS status. The Trinity Test was far more than just nationally significant; the dawn of the nuclear age loomed over humanity as backyard bunkers were constructed in anticipation of a nuclear apocalypse. In theory, it should have been easy to transform Trinity into a park unit, as it was already located on federal property deep in the White Sands Missile Range (just 37 miles north of what is now White Sands National Park).
However, a lack of clear, quality historic objects split the opinion of historians consulting on the project. Unlike other historic sites that centered around a prehistoric ruin, battleground, or dwelling, the Trinity Site lacked a focal point. The steel structure used on July 16, 1945 to suspend “Gadget” (the nuclear test device) above the Tularosa Basin had already been removed and destroyed. The bunkers that had shielded the Manhattan Project scientists as they observed the test remained, but they sat miles away from Ground Zero.
The MacDonald Ranch house where the plutonium test core had been assembled was considered for inclusion, but it wasn’t much to behold. Park planners proposed displaying the B-29 bomber that had carried the Little Boy to Hiroshima as part of the monument, but the Defense Department planned to continue using it for nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
The morality of Atomic Bomb National Monument?
Underlying the debate over the quality of the site was a serious ethical dilemma. Was it moral to put Trinity on display for tourists? As the Truman Administration considered using nuclear weapons to end World War Two, many in the scientific community had pleaded with them not to bomb civilians. Following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a widespread public sentiment that the indiscriminate and horrifically indescribable end wrought on millions of innocent Japanese civilians was a national disgrace.
As it simmered across the decades, the Cold War threat of mutually assured destruction, nationwide health effects caused by atmospheric nuclear testing, and accidents at civilian power reactors would only steepen the downward trend of public opinion. In the early stages of planning the Atomic Bomb National Monument, NPS officials received a letter from a civilian that stated “I should have no feeling of pride, or even curiosity, in visiting such a spot [as Trinity].”1
Amongst all of this, it seemed that there was one element of the Trinity Site that deserved to be preserved. The intensity of the nuclear blast (which was hotter than the surface of the sun) had fused the surface of the New Mexico desert into a green-complexioned glass. Dubbed trinitite, it was littered throughout the test site — a strange act of creation commemorating a moment of mass destruction.
If anything that remained of the test could be the focal point of a place-based museum of the atom bomb, it was the trinitite — if it wasn’t all destroyed first.
The entanglement of jurisdictions
Though completely unique to the site, trinitite wasn’t a particularly valuable material; souvenir-seekers trespassed on ground zero to harvest trinitite, which was sold for 50 cents at a local gas station.2 Not particularly concerned with the historical value of preserving the glassy substance, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) made plans to bulldoze the Trinity Site and bury the trinitite
Though Trinity had been the property of the U.S. Army in 1945, it was transferred to the brand-new AEC in 1947. The AEC had little to no interest in the site and quickly looked to mothball it. AEC indifference — and the potential plowing over of any remaining historic value — meant that proponents of Atomic Bomb National Monument needed to work quickly.
Luckily, they possessed a tool that could create a new national park essentially overnight: the 1906 Antiquities Act that allowed the president to create national monuments on federal land via proclamation. While Interior Secretary Harold Ickes had urged the use of the Antiquities Act to preserve the site, the effort was stalled by uncertainty over how the transfer from Defense to Interior would take place.
If it was only the murky waters of jurisdiction that needed to be navigated, then perhaps the Atomic Bomb National Monument would exist today. Instead, it would be national security concerns that ultimately sank the project. The White Sands Missile Range was central to both Cold War and moonshot efforts; it was hardly a place for tourists and their prying cameras. In an attempt at compromise, several bills were introduced to create the national monument but open it only after the military value of the landscape had elapsed. None had the privilege of becoming law.
The monument at Trinity
In the end, there were too many involved parties, differences of opinion, levels of jurisdiction, and superseding security concerns for Atomic Bomb National Monument to come into existence. Today, Trinity is home to a monument, but it is just a simple black obelisk commemorating the nuclear test.
In addition, the National Park Service does have a small presence at Trinity. Twice a year, the NPS administers a program on behalf of the Department of Defense that allows civilians to see the site — and experience the eeriness of standing in a place that destroyed lives, launched an energy revolution, and shaped geopolitics for half a century.
- US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Intermountain Cultural Resource Center, Dunes and Dreams: A History of White Sands National Monument, by Michael Welsh. Pg. 155-156. ↩︎
- US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Intermountain Cultural Resource Center, Dunes and Dreams: A History of White Sands National Monument, by Michael Welsh. Pg. 157. ↩︎
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