Nevada Outback Trip, Part 1: Atomic Tour

[kevin_standlee]

Lisa and I have been getting increasingly antsy and wanting to get out of the house and go see things, but with no sign of a vaccine being available for us mere under-65s, we wanted something that would be away from other people and was close enough to be able to get back home the same day. So we decided to go see the site of the atomic test in our backyard.



I'm not kidding. Project Shoal was an underground nuclear test that took place on October 26, 1963 (a little short of two years before I was born) in the Sand Springs Mountains east of Fallon. It was about 90 km / 56 mi southeast of our house as the desert raven flies, or about 110 km / 68 mi by road. The site is open to the public, but you have to figure out how to get there yourself, as there are no road signs. If it hadn't been for Google Maps, we might never have found it.

The first part of the trip is easy enough. We headed east on US-50A, then US-50 through Fallon, then continued east to NV-839, then turned south about 8 km / 5 mi to an otherwise unmarked dirt road.



Here's what we've called "Shoal Road" but that has no signs or other markings. We scouted this trip out on Google Maps before we started, so we were mostly prepared for this. If you try this route, ignore references to NV-31 in Google Maps. That is an obsolete reference to a Nevada state highway from the pre-1976 network.



What appears to be a military equipment "boneyard" on the left as we headed south on NV-839 was a hard-to-miss landmark.



We took the Astro, which is not an off-road vehicle. There were a number of free-range cows wandering around the road, but this was not a problem.



We decided that as long as the road looked passable, we would give it a try.



I'm skipping ahead in the chronology in case anyone wants to try and use this as a guide to go see the monument. The branch to the right and up a short rise is the actual road leading up to the monument, but it's not in great condition, and because nothing is marked, we initially missed it and went straight ahead.



There are several other unmarked dirt roads here, so you need to watch out for where you're going. This one led to one of the monitoring shafts surrounding the test site.



Continuing up the road, we came to a dead end with this interesting view, which is from just past a turn-around loop. One certainly wouldn't want to come charging up here at high speed, as it's a pretty nasty drop.



After stopping to admire the view, we turned around and slowly made our way back down the road.



We spotted this from the road and went to investigate.



This turned out to be another monitoring shaft.



Near what looks like a large spoil pile, we found a concrete pad and this remnant of what we postulate was an anchor for monitoring equipment.



This piece of old cable came right up out of the ground. It could possibly have been part of the test monitoring equipment. Stuff lasts a long time out in the desert.



To my surprise, my mobile phone was able to get a signal and showed us that we were within 500 m of the monument. We spotted it in the distance, worked our way back down the "main road," and turned up the branch to where the monument is located.



Standing in front of the minivan parked near the monument, Lisa took this picture facing west toward what we postulate is the spoil pile from the 369 meter deep shaft driven about 300 m east of the Project Shoal test site. This spoil pile is near the concrete slab, rusted metal support, and old cable pictured above.



Kuma Bear posted for his close-up with the monument.



Then both me and Kuma posed for a picture.



This small marker is located about 1 m behind the stone monument.

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Lisa took a panoramic video by standing in place and pivoting with the camera.



Lisa walked down to the "main road," where there were still pockets of snow in sheltered places, even though the air temperature was probably around 10-12°C.



I gingerly eased the van down the partially-washed-out side road from the monument. If you have a low-clearance vehicle, I would suggest parking at the foot of this branch and walking up.



We headed back east and down, passing several slightly mangy-looking cows like this one.



Aside from the bit near the monument itself, this was a passable road over which I had no difficulty driving.

We found this a very interesting trip. If it weren't for the monument and the monitoring shafts, you'd never know that anything had ever happened here, let alone a 12-kiloton nuclear detonation 300 meters below our feet. Now while as one news story said, you wouldn't want to eat the dirt here (probably because it's naturally contaminated with stuff like arsenic), this area is not "hot" and we were not concerned for our safety. After nearly sixty years, it would probably be difficult to even detect anything above normal background radiation here.

I know it's unlikely that anyone else will come visit this spot, but if somehow your travels take you across "The Loneliest Road," you might consider a relatively short side trip to one of the few atomic bomb test sites you can visit on your own.

Our original plan was to retrace our steps and go home, but when we got back to NV-839, we had a different idea. More about that tomorrow when I feel up to writing about it and get the photographs and video cataloged and uploaded.

Comments

[garyomaha]

Interesting. This adventure reminded me that, in younger days, a friend and I would chase down radio towers in the distance, which led us down some nearly impassable roads. That was well before GPS and even the service station roadmaps didn't list many of the roads to the towers.

[kevin_standlee]

Growing up on a series of US Forest Service bases where my father was stationed, we had easy access to the excellent USFS maps, which are based off of the US Geological Survey maps. Also, Dad did know his district as part of his job, of course. OTOH, even he managed to get us stuck sometimes, which is why he had a winch on his pickup.

Lisa did note yesterday that she wishes that we'd brought our Nevada Gazetteer, which is much more detailed than the Nevada state highway map we had with us.

[wild_patience]

Is this the same site where, not too long after the test, they filmed a John Wayne movie, resulting in some cast and crew members getting cancer from the radiation?

[kevin_standlee]

I doubt it. That is more likely to have been in Southern Nevada, I think. But I was unaware of the story.

However, due to my exposure to radiation yesterday, I have sustained epidermal damage on all unprotected surfaces and am in moderate pain today, To put it another way, I spent a bunch of time wandering around on a 5000-foot-high plateau on a clear day without wearing sunscreen, and therefore got sunburned on my face and neck. It would have been worse had I not been wearing my broad-brimmed Australian Jacaru hat.

[delosharriman]

You are thinking of the movie "The Conqueror", about Genghis Khan, location shots for which were filmed in the vicinity of St George's, Utah, a place Howard Hughes liked a great deal for whatever reason. He also brought back some of the soil to use on the soundstage.

The fact that St George's, because of a trick of geography, was one of the places in the contiguous USA which received the largest amount of fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing (primarily at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas, quite a ways away from where Kevin, Lisa, & Kuma hang out), has been suggested as connected with the fact that a number of people involved with the production died of lung cancer. On the other hand, smoking was also exceedingly common at the time, & there is a distinct lack of scientific evidence for exposure to bomb fallout, even among the permanent population of St George's, leading to an elevated risk of lung cancer. The exceptionally high levels of lung cancer among uranium miners in Czechoslovakia in the late 1940s & early '50s are often attributed to radon exposure, but a similar incidence is not seen elsewhere, for instance in the Port Hope radium miners who also worked without modern protective measures (the only elevated cause of death among them was knife wounds), & it has been pointed out that the Czechoslovak miners were effectively paid in cigarettes!

[scott_sanford]

Wow, that was a nice day out! Lately I've been playing with Google Maps and imagining road trips; the real thing is more satisfying.

I looked at that road and thought it more suitable for the pickup. Yikes! No doubt the Astro offers more amenities for road trips.

[kevin_standlee]

The pickup is currently not rigged for passengers. Aside from that last bit climbing up to the monument proper, it was a pretty good road. Lisa wouldn't have let me try the Astro on it if she didn't think it passable. Indeed, there are public dirt roads within the Fernley city limits that are in worse condition.

[scott_sanford]

I'm glad it looked worse than it was.

Also, I suppose the usual anti-public-infrastructure people have been at NDOT. It would be nice to have good roads within the town.

[kevin_standlee]

In this case it's the people of Fernley who say no taxes for anything and the guv'mint gets paid too much anyway, so they rejected local taxes to pay for paving roads within city limits. Instead, the people who live up there end up getting tank-like vehicles because the dirt roads are so bad -- which I suspect costs them more in the long run -- and gripe about how bad the roads are.