further prerequisites, ones that had initially narrowed the possibilities of usable land to that within the Nevada Test Site. The place needed to contain “no preexisting contamination,” to be reasonably flat, and to cover approximately fifty square miles. Ideally, it would be a dry lake valley, “preferably a site where mountain-valley drainage currents would induce large amount of shear,” or flow. It had to be as far away as possible from prying eyes, but most important, it had to be a place where there was no possibility that the public could learn that officials were even considering such a catastrophic scenario, let alone preparing for one. It was decided that in press releases the 57 Project would only be referred to as “a safety test,” nothing more. With a doctor named James Shreve Jr. in charge of things, the project had an almost wholesome ring to it.
One dry lake bed originally considered was Papoose Lake, located six miles due south of Groom Lake, also just outside the test site. But soil samples taken by weapons planners revealed the earth there already had trace amounts of plutonium, owing to previous nuclear explosions conducted inside the test site in 1951, 1952, and 1953, five miles to the west at another dry lake bed called Frenchman Flat. Further complicating matters, Papoose Lake was the subject of contention between the Atomic Energy Commission and two local farmers, the Stewart brothers. The dispute was over eight dead cows that had been grazing at Papoose Lake in March of 1953 when a twenty- four-kiloton nuclear bomb called Nancy was detonated nearby. Nancy sent radioactive fallout on livestock across the region, including those grazing at Papoose Lake. Sixteen of the Stewart brothers’ horses died from acute radiation poisoning, along with their cows. The commission had paid the Stewarts three hundred dollars for each dead horse but stubbornly refused to pay the men for the dead cows. Instead, a lieutenant colonel from the Army’s Veterinary Corps, Bernard F. Trum, wrote a long, jargon-filled letter to the farmers stating there was “nothing to indicate that [the blast] was the actual cause of the [cows’] deaths.” Instead, the commission insisted the cows’ deaths were “text book cases… of vitamin-A deficiency.”
Shamelessly, the commission had a second doctor, a bovine specialist with Los Alamos, to certify in writing that “Grass Tetany” or “general lack of good forage” had killed the cows, not the atomic explosion over the hill. To add insult to injury, the Atomic Energy Commission told the Stewart brothers that its Los Alamos scientists had subjected their own cows to atomic blasts in New Mexico during the original Trinity bomb test in 1945. Those cows, the commission stated, were “burnt by the radioactivity over their entire dorsum and yet have remained in excellent health for years.” In essence, the commission was saying, Our nuked cows are alive; yours should be too.
The Stewart brothers remained unconvinced and requested a note of explanation they could understand. In 1957, as weapons planners were determining where to hold Project 57, the dispute remained unresolved. Fearing that any attention brought to Papoose Lake might ignite the unresolved Stewart brothers’ controversy, officials crossed the Papoose Lake land parcel off the location list.
The focus narrowed to a large, flat expanse in the Groom Lake valley, the same valley where the CIA was running its U-2 program. There, to the northwest of Area 51, lay a perfect sixteen-square-mile flat parcel of land — relatively virgin territory that no one was using. A record search determined that all grazing rights to the area had been “extinguished,” meaning that local farmers and ranchers were already prohibited from allowing their livestock to roam there. Then weaponstest planners made an aerial inspection of Groom Lake. Colonel E. A. Blue joined the project’s director, Dr. Shreve, in an overhead scout. In a classified memo, the two men joked about how they spotted a herd of cows roaming around the chosen site, “60 to 80 cattle who hadn’t gotten the word,” and that “somehow information must be gotten to them and their masters.” Gallows humor for cows.
A land-use deal between the Department of Defense, which controlled the area for the Air Force, and the Atomic Energy Commission, the civilian organization that controlled the test site, was struck. As it was with the rest of the loosely defined Area 51, this
desired land parcel lay conveniently just outside the legal boundaries of the Nevada Test Site, to the northeast. This allowed the 57 Project to fall under the rubric of a military operation, which could assist in shielding it from official Atomic Energy Commission disclosures, the same way calling it a safety test did. Anyone with oversight regarding unsafe nuclear tests simply didn’t know where to look. In the end, the land designation even allowed Project 57 to be excluded from official Nevada Test Site maps. As of 2011, it still is.
In March of 1957, workers cordoned off the area in preparation for Project 57. The nuclear warhead was flown from Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico to the Yucca Lake airstrip at the test site and transferred to Building 11, where it would remain in storage until explosion day. Since it needed its own name for record-keeping purposes, officials decided to designate it Area 13.
Richard Mingus was tired. The twenty-four-year-old Ohio native had been working double shifts at the Sands hotel for three years and four months, ever since he returned home from the front lines of the Korean War. Newly married, Mingus and his wife, Gloria, had their first baby on the way. The Sands was the most popular spot on the Las Vegas Strip. It was the place where high rollers and partygoers went for entertainment, where they could hear the Rat Packers sing in the Copa Room. The restaurant at the Sands was a first-class operation, with silver service delivered from over-the-shoulder trays. Richard Mingus was proud to work there. Once he even got to wait on Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher. But by the summer of 1956, the novelty of hearing celebrity singers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. perform had taken a backseat to the financial uncertainty that comes with a waiter’s life. When he’d learned Gloria, the light of his life, was pregnant, Mingus became elated. Then economic insecurity settled in. In addition to having a little one on the way, Mingus supported his widowed mother back east.
Looking back, Mingus reflects on that time in his life. “You can never guess what the future holds,” he says. That summer, life dealt Richard and Gloria Mingus a cruel blow. Gloria delivered prematurely, and their baby died in the hospital. They were without health insurance, and the bills accompanying the tragedy left Richard Mingus overwhelmed. Gloria became despondent. “I needed a solid job. And one that came with hospital benefits,” Mingus explains. “It was time for me to find a profession. So I asked one of the waiters at the Sands if he knew about anything.” Mingus learned the federal government was hiring security guards. The following morning he drove over to Second Avenue and Bonanza Street to apply.
There, Mingus stood in a long line of about a hundred other applicants for what seemed like hours. The Nevada Test Site, which was a sixty-five-mile commute to the northwest, had jobs. Rumors were those jobs paid well. The atomic tests, which had begun five years earlier, in 1951, had brought tens of millions of dollars in business to the Las Vegas economy. For the most part, Las Vegas as a city had endorsed the tests because they were such an economic boon. And yet it had been more than a year since the last atomic test series, which was called Operation Teapot and which was made up of twelve nuclear bomb explosions, including one that was dropped from an airplane. Controversies about fallout, particularly debates involving strontium-90, the deadly by- product of uranium and plutonium fission, had made their way into the public domain. For a while, there was even talk among locals that the test site could get shut down. Standing in line, Mingus got the sense that closing down the test site was far from reality. And he was right — weapons planners were gearing up for the largest atomic bomb test series ever to take place in the continental United States.
Mingus stood in line for a long time. Finally, a sergeant took his fingerprints and asked him if he had any military background. When Mingus said he’d served in Korea, the sergeant nodded with approval and sent him into a separate room. Las Vegas in the 1950s was a town made up largely of gamblers, swindlers, and fortune seekers. The fact that Mingus was a former soldier with an honorable discharge made him an ideal candidate for what the government was after: good men who could qualify for a Q clearance, which was required for a job involving nuclear weapons. Mingus filled out paperwork and answered a battery of questions. In just a few hours, Mingus was, tentatively, offered a job. Exactly what the job entailed, the recruiter could not say, but it paid more than twice what the best local waiters made during a stellar night at the Sands. Most important to Mingus, the job came with health insurance — Gloria’s dream. He could begin work as soon as his security clearance came in. That process could take as long as five months.
Richard Mingus had no idea that he was about to become one of the first Federal Services security guards assigned to Area 51. Or that the very first nuclear test he would be asked to stand guard over would be Project 57—America’s first dirty bomb.
From the first atomic explosions of Operation Crossroads, in 1946, until the Nevada Test Site opened its doors, in 1951, America tested its nuclear weapons on atolls and islands in the Pacific Ocean. There, in a vast open area roughly twice the size of the state of Texas, the Pentagon enjoyed privacy. The Marshall Islands were a million miles away from the American psyche, which made secret-keeping easy. But the Pacific Proving Ground was a long haul for the Pentagon in terms of moving more than ten thousand people and millions of tons of equipment back and forth from the United States for each test series. Guarding these military assets en route to the Pacific required a
