In the Shadow of Trinity

The Trinity Test took place approximately 60 miles north of White Sands National Park

U.S. Department of Energy

Quick Facts

Amenities

2 listed

Parking - Auto, Parking - Bus/RV

What is the day that has most impacted your life? Is it a major event like a wedding? A birth? A death? Or was it a leisurely day like today exploring in a park like this? Why did this one day have a long-lasting impact on your life? These special days that change our lives are unique for each one of us but we all undoubtedly have them. Even rarer than a day that has a special significance to just you, are days that have an undeniable impact on every person on earth. If you had been standing here in the early morning of July 16^th, 1945, you would have been witness to such an event. As you look out over the dunes to the north, imagine you are here before sunrise and a blinding flash of light appears in the distance before fading away without explanation. The first shot of the atomic age had been fired 60 miles to the north at the Trinity Test site. For three years in near-total secrecy scientists and workers at three sites across the United States had been developing a new kind of weapon designed to bring a swift end to World War II. Known collectively as the Manhattan Project, the Trinity Test was the culmination of their years of work and within weeks of the successful test here in New Mexico the first atomic weapons would be dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, avoiding a full-scale invasion of Japan, but inflicting hundreds of thousands in civilian casualties. To this day they are the only nuclear weapons to have been used. However, the opening of the nuclear age at the Trinity site has had untold impacts on the world we live in. The potential for nuclear weapons to end human existence through mutually assured destruction has dominated global politics throughout the Cold War and into the 21^st century. It has brought benefits to society in the forms of nuclear energy and medicine, but the adverse impacts cannot be ignored. In communities downwind from nuclear testing sites or uranium mines, the consequences have been devastating with high rates of cancer and birth defects. The Trinity Test is the point in time when the Pandora’s box of the atomic age was opened, and these sands bore witness to that moment.