“We used to get up in the morning, drive out to the highway and watch the blast. There was a regular caravan of cars going out. We’d park on the side of the road, wait until it was all over, go home, have breakfast, get the kids off to school and then go to work.”
That’s how Gail Andress remembers the nuclear testing 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas in the early 1950s. He and his wife Donna, now both in their 80s, regularly watched the much-celebrated detonations that could be felt as far away as Los Angeles. There were blinding flashes, multi-kiloton fireballs, mushroom clouds and subsequent bursts of air skirting outward. The explosions became a tourist draw, and cars rolled in from far away to witness them.
“It was absolutely brilliant,” Andress says. “It looked like the sun come up again. It lit the whole area. We were assured there wasn’t going to be a problem. It was real interesting. It was an attraction.”