Congress discussed the environmental and health consequences of nuclear fallout
resulting from atmospheric nuclear tests. Atomic Tests Were a Tourist Draw in 1950s Las
Vegas, Nevada’s nuclear-bomb testing spawned a spectator culture tinged with both
profound fear and Sin City delight. Years ago, another sort of light flashed over Fremont
and attracted a crowd: the bursts of atomic bombs. For four decades, the U.S. Department
of Energy tested more than a thousand nuclear devices at the Nevada Test Site, a desert
expanse just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The 1951 detonation of a warhead 1,060 feet
over the desert floor marked the beginning of the above-ground trials, whose famous
mushroom clouds were easily visible from the nearby tourist magnet. “They would light up
the sky,” says Allen Palmer, executive director of the National Atomic Testing Museum. “It
turned night into day.”
