Early in 2023 I signed up to visit the Nevada National Security Site — better known as the Nuclear Test Site. It’s a free tour on a commercial bus with around 40 people, but you need to submit your request months in advance so the Department of Energy can process your clearance. Absolutely worth it — I’d recommend it to anyone. The one catch: no personal photography is allowed. The tour guide takes a few group shots, which then have to be reviewed and approved for release before they’re sent to participants. Our guide was a woman who had worked at the site for decades before retiring, and she was a wealth of stories — everything from the tests themselves to daily life in the town of Mercury and what it was like to work there.

Mercury, Nevada Nuclear Test Site

The top left photo shows our group at the Area 2 Gun Turret — a Navy Mark 9 turret from the USS Louisville cruiser, acquired from the Mare Island Navy Shipyard in 1957. It was positioned one mile from the tower holding the nuclear device and modified with a single lead-lined tube to measure radiation levels from specific angles during the blast. The middle photo shows one of the surviving test houses from the Apple 2 experiment. You've likely seen footage from tests like this — mannequins, cars, and furniture arranged inside houses to study the effects of the blast and evaluate shelter options. Seeing one of those houses in person is something else. We also drove past ground zero for several tests, the press benches where media watched the detonations, and the trenches where soldiers were positioned during the blasts. And beyond the above-ground tests, the landscape is pocked with craters from the many underground tests as well.

The large photo is Sedan Crater, one of the most dramatic stops on the tour. It was created as part of the Plowshare Program, in which the Atomic Energy Commission explored peaceful applications for nuclear devices — the idea being that harbors or canals could be blasted out rather than excavated. A 104-kiloton thermonuclear device was buried 635 feet underground. The resulting explosion displaced 12 million tons of earth, carving out a crater 1,280 feet across and 320 feet deep — equivalent in force to a 4.75 magnitude earthquake. Standing at the rim and looking down is genuinely awe-inspiring.

The tour runs on Mondays, so I decided to make a week of it and stay in the Las Vegas/Henderson area. What I hadn’t realized was that the F1 race was scheduled for the following weekend — the Strip was an absolute construction zone with all the preparations underway. The tour departs from the Atomic Museum, which I visited the day before. It’s a fascinating place — the entire history of nuclear testing is laid out on a timeline, contextualized alongside major world events, with displays of artifacts throughout. The museum is just a couple of blocks off the Strip, and the bus had to cross one of the temporary bridges built over the race track to get out of town. On the way back that evening, we passed the Sphere, which put on several different light shows as we drove by — a surreal cap to an already remarkable day.

This was my first real stretch of time in Las Vegas on my own, and I made the most of it. I finally got to visit Hoover Dam — I had tried once before after COVID restrictions were lifted, only to find the dam itself hadn’t reopened yet. I also made it to the Neon Museum for the evening presentation, which is a completely different experience from the daytime visit I’d had before — so much more striking after dark. And I checked off Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, which had been on my list ever since visiting the original Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. On the drive home I swung through Nelson Ghost Town, just south of Las Vegas — a great final stop.