Living in the Shadow of the Bomb

 

 
Growing up in Las Vegas, it was always there.  As kids we didn't give it much thought. By 1964, the testing was all done underground.  Pres. Kennedy had signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty before his death that banned above-ground atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.  The Test Site would issue a warning that it was going to be doing underground nuclear testing and we might feel the jolt.  It was alot like experiencing a medium sized earthquake.  The ground would shake and after a few minutes, it would pass. 

When I moved to Los Angeles until the Northridge Earthquake of 1994, earthquakes didn't get my attention much because they were so similar to the Underground Testing I had grown up with. 

The United States Government decided in the late 1940s that it needed a new Test Site.  The Bikini Atoll where they had been testing was too far away and the wind and weather changes made planning difficult.  The Atomic Energy Commission decided to bring the above-ground testing of Atomic Bombs stateside.  It was the Cold War and discussions about the hazards involved with the Testing were whisked aside.

Nevada, specifically Southern Nevada, fit the bill.  Sparsely populated with Nellis Air Force base nearby in Northtown, Frenchman's Flat, located about 60 miles north of Las Vegas was chosen. 

Scientists from around the country were recruited to come to Las Vegas.  Atomic Scientist Al O'Donnell remembered "The Atomic Age is here and you'd be on the ground floor of testing of atomic weapons."  The engineering and scientific companies like E.G.&G came to Las Vegas and brought their staffs with them.  "Millions of dollars came into Las Vegas because these companies wanted a piece of the action. " Al O'Donnell told me in a 2005 interview.

Camp Mecury was set up and soldiers were deployed to the remote base to supply support for the scientists.  The soldiers would be on the front line, digging trenches and then watching the bomb blast from those trenches before being sent out to explore the bomb site after the explosion.  The soldiers were assured that every precaution was taken and that there was no harm in being that close to ground zero.

 

Atomic Soldiers at the Royal Nevada

(courtesy of the Las Vegas News Bureau) 

In Las Vegas, residents were assured that the Atomic Testing was not harmful.  The government encouraged school children to get up in the early morning hours and watch the bomb go off from their front yards.  Young adults like Bud Kennedy and John Ullom would drive out the old Tonopah Highway, pull over on the side of the road and watch the explosions from there.

Las Vegas News Bureau photographers such as the late Don English, would go out to News Nob, located 7 miles from the blast site, where the press from all over the world would be lined up with their cameras and their movie cameras to photograph the explosions.  One time Don overslept.  He knew he wouldn't have time to get out to News Nob before the detonation.  He hurried down to Fremont Street and climbed up on the roof of the Golden Nugget and waited.  There were workmen there installing a glass skylight and they asked him what he was doing.  He told them they would know shortly.  The bomb went off.  As the mushroom cloud rose in the sky, the ground began to shake and the panes of glass broke.  Don didn't lose his concentration and snapped a photo of the mushroom cloud rising with downtown Las Vegas in the foreground.  The photo went out on the wire and became Life Magazine's photo of the week.

 

Don English's famous photo of a nuclear cloud over an American City. 

Donna Andress remembers that "we weren't fearful of it.  We were assured over and over again that there was never going to be a problem."

Don English remembered that "we believed everything the A.E.C. (Atomic Energy Commission) said and we figured we were quite safe.  They did give us precautions, you know,  not to look at it during the blast.  They gave us dark glasses and we would turn away at that close distant.  As soon as you saw the flash, then you could turn around and start shooting."

Emmett Sullivan, who had been born in Las Vegas in the mid-1920s, remembers "It was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw in my life.  As it died down you saw all the colors of the rainbow."

Most remember being jostled out of bed in the wee hours of the morning while it was still dark out.  "It was always early, like 4 or 5:00 in the morning. You could be in your bed and it was like somebody had turned on a light on right in your face.  And then you'd hear the noise and run outside so you could see the mushroom cloud forming." Ken Gragson told me in a 2003 interview.

If the wind was blowing towards Las Vegas, the test would be called off and rescheduled.  It was one of the concessions the A.E.C. had made when it came to Southern Nevada.

With the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the testing went underground.  While we didn't get jostled out of bed, some of the tests were so explosive that they did get our attention.  One bomb was so big that it knocked out the floor to ceiling display windows at the Woolco in our Charleston Heights neighborhood. 

There were rumors of the bombs being vented afterwards but again the A.E.C. and local officials assured us everything was safe.

Looking back now, it's easy to say that we were naive but back then there was more trust in the government, especially in the 1950s.   

By the 1970s, there were stories coming out of Southern Utah from the small towns downwind of Las Vegas.  People were dying of cancer at a rate higher than normal.  John Fuller wrote a book "The Day We Bombed Utah" which recounted how the story of how the above ground testing had devasted a family of sheep farmers in St. George and the effects of not only cancer but thyroid disease on the small farming communities of Southern Utah.  Fuller also raised the question that perhaps it was filming on location in Moab and other areas for the movie, The Conqueror  (during a particulaly busy summer in 1954 when the Test Site was in full-swing) that led to the deaths of the stars of the movie John Wayne and Susan Hayward along with many of the cast and crew.

My family used to drive to Southern Utah to get fresh fruit and vegetables.  A day trip to St. George or Cedar City was fun.   It gave us a break from the desert climate and landscape.

I think of these things each morning when I take my thyroid medication.  And I wonder how many more who grew up in Las Vegas during those times are taking their thyroid meds as well.

 

Don English at News Nob

 

Imagine having to get out of your trench and head towards that

 

Special thanks to the Family of Don English, Bo Boisvert and the Las Vegas News Bureau for letting use this images.

For more information on the Test Site we encourage everyone to visit the Atomic Testing Museum on E. Flamingo. 

For more personal stories of Las Vegas at that time and growing up with the bomb, we encourage you to buy the DVD: The Story of Classic Las Vegas: An Overview 

The La Concha and the Las Vegas Neon Museum

As we noted a few weeks back in our Historic Site of the Week, the La Concha is being pieced back together so that it can serve as the lobby and gift shop for the Neon Museum.

Kristen Peterson, in today's Las Vegas Sun brings us up to date on the progress.:

"But after all these years of bulldozing our history, neglecting the unique architecture, something had to give. That something was this conch-inspired structure that served as the entrance to La Concha Motel, built when 5,000-room hotels weren’t even part of the discussion.

Neon was our visual commodity then. We were the first midcentury modern city. A city with no past. No 19th-century concert halls or skyscrapers to define us. No vast inventory of historic sites.

But now La Concha is our past."

Click here to read the rest of the article.

This is an important preservation project on many different levels.  Thanks to the efforts of the Neon Museum and its donors, the La Concha did not go quietly into the night and the pages of history.  It was saved from the wrecking ball and moved across town to find new life as the gateway to the Neon Museum.

In a town that will (hopefully) discover cultural tourism one of these days and have enough historic buildings left to make it viable, the La Concha stands as the outpost for what cultural tourism can do for Fremont Street and Downtown Las Vegas.

This is an important step in the right direction for a city that too often only thinks of the next big thing.  The Friends of Classic Las Vegas encourages everyone to support the Neon Museum in this important endeavor. 

Thanks to LasVegasTodayandTomorrow for letting us this photo. 

The Las Vegas I Remember

 

 "It was a city of neon" Sen. Richard Bryan, interview 2005

I am haunted by places that I remember.  As I drive around Las Vegas in the 21st Century, I am constantly reminded of the Las Vegas of the 20th Century and the places that were once there and now only live in my (and maybe yours) memory.

It's not easy driving by a new box store or a new faux-Tuscan shopping mall and remembering the businesses that were once there.

There seems to be a trend in this new century to make every city look the same.  

When I was growing up, one of the joys of going on a road trip was to see some place different.  From roadside architecture to signage to mom and pop businesses, the highways and byways of America were filled with unique businesses and only a smattering of chain restaurants such as Sambo's, Howard Johnson's or IHOP.

Today, the uniqueness is almost all but gone and the roadways of America are filled with places such as Home Depot, Loewe's, Target, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Office Depot, Staples, Ramada Inn and many more all done in the lastest faux-Mediterran/Tuscan architecture.

I remember the little motor motels that used to dot the Strip.  This, of course, was back in the day when you drove the Strip.  The then resort hotels were surrounded by expanses of desert and you could not walk from one to the other the way you can today.  That Strip was built for the automobile.  With wonderful neon signs that glowed in the night, that Strip welcomed the weary traveler to come in off the road, it didn't matter if it was the Sands Hotel or the Desert Rose Motel.  Those little motels with their dancing neon signs were just as much a part of the Las Vegas Strip of yore as the gas stations, restaurants and wedding chapels.

 

 

I remember Fremont Street when it was still open to traffic and cruising on Friday and Saturday nights.  Kids began cruising Fremont Street in the late 1930s.  As Fremont Street grew beyond 6th Street and all the way down to Boulder Highway, there was the Blue Onion Drive-In (down near where the Blue Angel Motel stands today) and kids would start there and head west on Fremont trying to hit the green lights.  As they neared the train depot the idea was to hit the green light at Main, go around the circular drive in front of the depot, hit the green light again and head back to the Blue Onion.  Then, grab a coke and start the ritual all over again.

Long before the canopy was put over Fremont Street and traffic cordoned off, the neon used to shoot into the sky and the street was known as Glitter Gulch.  Small gambling halls competed along side the better known places such as the Horseshoe Club and the Golden Nugget.  There were retail stores like Coronet and Woolworths, Sears and JC Penney's and our own homegrown, Ronzone's.

Restaurants, motor hotels and gas stations lined the fabled street where once houses had stood.  Today, some of the facades still stand but more and more are falling to the wrecking ball as developers with high-rise/mixed use fever move in.

Here are some of my favorite memories:

 

This wonderful restaurant had been at three different locations before its final location across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center Rotunda.

 

When architecture and signage wasn't homogenized.

 

 

 

 

 Today, I  wonder why Americans ever leave home any more if every where they travel to looks like where they live.

Special Thanks to RoadsidePictures for letting us these images.