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Cocktails and contamination: The strange era when Las Vegas threw atomic-bomb parties

An explosion at the Nevada Test Site in 1957 - Getty
An explosion at the Nevada Test Site in 1957 - Getty

A few seconds after midday, a cry went up from the crowd at the Desert Inn.

It continued for several moments, a mixture of excitement and admiration which – as it hung in the air – seemed to mimic the very thing that had caused it. Some 65 miles to the north-west, the mushroom cloud billowed up, puffed out its chest and rolled with that boiling grey-white fervour of the radioactive explosion. The main event. The headline act.

Back on the balcony, the onlookers murmured once more and sipped their cocktails – suitably impressed at the rise of the USA’s Atomic Age.

It seems a remarkable and unlikely image now. Improbable. And deeply distasteful. Not least here amid the tensions of 2022, when the spectre of nuclear war has risen from what we all hoped was the geopolitical grave, and Russia is rattling sabres of a type not brandished with menace in the best part of 40 years.

But back in the mid-Fifties, on a strange tide of joy and curiosity, the A-bomb was a bright new reason for parties which played out in the hotels of Las Vegas.

Atomic tourism was a big deal in 1950s Vegas - Alamy
Atomic tourism was a big deal in 1950s Vegas - Alamy

On February 18 1955, at 11:59:59am, local time, the US government launched Operation Teapot – the latest of its nuclear programmes on the sands of the closely guarded Nevada Test Site. This experimental zone had been established just over four years earlier, in January 1951. The radioactive trials that were conducted there were meant to be top secret. But within four years, the word was more than out. It was a cause for celebration.

Wasp, the device at the heart of the matter that giddy lunchtime – was a tubby item, 1.5 metres in diameter, 3.25 metres long; a Mark 6 atom bomb which bore similarities to (while being an upgrade upon) the Mark 3 ‘Fat Man’ that had been dropped onto the Japanese city of Nagasaki ten years earlier. Its mushroom cloud was visible for 100 miles. Nevada’s biggest city watched in awe.

Such was the naivety of the era. A generation of Americans, flushed in the afterglow of victory over Germany and Japan in 1945, but wary of the increasingly chill context of the Cold War and the iciness of relations with the Soviet Union, were suddenly in thrall to their nation’s status as one of the planet’s nuclear powers. And Uncle Sam was happy to demonstrate his fresh muscle, throwing deadly shapes for a pleased and patriotic audience.

An atomic glow brightens the night sky - Getty
An atomic glow brightens the night sky - Getty

Nowhere was this more the case than in Las Vegas, where explosions became cultural phenomena. Hotels like the Desert Inn and Binion’s Horseshoe, which faced north towards the test site, were among the most enthusiastic embracers of the idea, pinning back their doors for those who wanted to watch the “show” – assisted by the city’s Chamber of Commerce, which printed calendars with upcoming detonation times.

Between the founding of the Nevada Test Site and October 1963 – when, in the shocked retreat from the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibited nuclear tests above ground – the city was a regular and willing witness to the dark events that played out on and above its doorstep.

More than a witness, in fact. Las Vegas’s acceptance of the shadow of Armageddon went as far as glamour pageantry.

Four searches were held – in 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1957 – for ‘Miss Atomic’, a beauty queen who could represent these ground-breaking hours. Most famously, Lee Merlin was crowned ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ in 1957.

The 1957 Miss Atomic Bomb
The 1957 Miss Atomic Bomb

Photos capture her smiling winningly, clutching a fluffy cotton version of a mushroom cloud to her body in lieu of a dress – a dust-bowl Marilyn Monroe, all blonde hair, red lipstick and big-eyed American dreaming.

But if this was fun and frivolity – a jarring soundtrack of vague sexual suggestion and titillation for a new epoch of potential mass destruction – then it played out against a backdrop of problems stored up for the future.

Operation Teapot was not the first (or last) of the USA’s atomic test programmes – Operation Upshot-Knothole had penetrated the skies above Nevada in 1953; Operation Castle had caused immeasurable damage to the pristine archipelago of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific in 1954 – but it was one of the most detailed.

When Wasp bellowed its hello, armoured troops were in action beneath it, toying with tactics for success on the Cold War nuclear battlefield – with men coming as close to the hypocenter as 900 metres. The fallout from these explosions, meanwhile, was prone to drifting east on the wind – where St George in southwestern Utah stood in harm’s way. Cases of cancer and leukaemia leapt in this small city in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Reporters watch an explosion in 1958 - Getty
Reporters watch an explosion in 1958 - Getty

Skip forward over half a century, and this eager attitude to humanity’s most suicidal invention is made all the more unpalatable by the blackened milestones on the road behind us.

The next significant anniversaries of the atomic strikes on Japan – Hiroshima on August 6 1945, Nagasaki three days later on August 9 1945 – will be the 80th, in the summer of 2025. But every year brings sorrow and uncomfortable echoes in the cities which suffered the worst that humanity could throw at them.

Whatever your attitude to the Second World War’s endgame – twin necessary evils which brought an attritional conflict to a brutal but “early” conclusion, and saved lives in the process; two acts of unjustifiable sledgehammer aggression against (largely) civilian targets – there is nothing in those red-letter dates which merits celebration. The combined death toll from the attacks remains difficult to calculate exactly, but probably equates to a figure of somewhere between 130,000 and a quarter of a million people – from the initial blasts and their radioactive aftermaths. Another round of cocktails?

Mannequins were used to gauge the effect of the blasts on human bodies - Getty
Mannequins were used to gauge the effect of the blasts on human bodies - Getty

Atomic-bomb tourism remains a possibility, of course. Hiroshima (visithiroshima.net) and Nagasaki (visit-nagasaki.com) wear their scars openly (see below).

And Las Vegas (lasvegas.com) has not entirely kicked its fascination with the mushroom cloud – although, these days, the tone is rather more respectful.

The National Atomic Testing Museum (nationalatomictestingmuseum.org) performs its role four blocks east of the Strip – peering at the bomb and its presence so close to suburbia and its Fifties fantasies. Photos and videos dissect this oddest of chapters in the life of Sin City, while an innovative simulated theatre show lets you “experience” a nuclear blast with none of the side effects.

Binion’s Horseshoe still exists too, at 128 East Fremont Street (binions.com) – trading as Binion’s Gambling Hall and Hotel, albeit in somewhat diminished circumstances.

Certainly, it has lost the gleam of its atomic heyday, becoming one of the many Vegas relics to have long since been eclipsed by the likes of Wynn, The Venetian and other subsequent mega-resort arrivals. Indeed, by 2009, it had been reduced to a simple casino, its 366 rooms falling victim to recession. But a new boutique property, the Hotel Apache, brought 81 rooms back to life in 2019, and for now, Binion’s has a future as well as a past.

The Desert Inn, however, is no more – demolished to make space for the aforementioned Wynn Las Vegas. The final parts of the structure were imploded in November 2004. Perhaps, considering its former dalliance with things going boom, this was grimly appropriate. Its death lingers, however – you can watch its final moments online.

The ghost of the era has also made its way into popular culture. In 2012, The Killers included the song Miss Atomic Bomb on their fourth album, Battle Born. The American guitar-band are themselves a product of Las Vegas, having formed in the city in 2001, and much of their music has revelled in the dirt and drama – and occasional weirdness – of their Nevada context. But perhaps never more so than on this catchy five-minute single, with its talk that “the dust cloud has settled”, and its use of that remarkable image of Lee Merlin in her ridiculous dress (see above) as the cover – an unfathomable dark strangeness recycled as metaphor, but no less strange for the distance of seven decades.

Five ‘nuclear tourism’ sites

Nevada Test Site (USA)

One of the most notorious yet shadowy locations on the American map, the Nevada Test Site (NTS; though officially the “Nevada National Security Site” as of 2010) is still there towards the south-west side of the state, hidden away in the Eleana Range. In total, it has witnessed 928 nuclear tests, though 828 of them were conducted underground, and weapons trials ceased in 1992 with the approach of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Nonetheless, the NTS has been neither forgotten, nor forgiven. It is still a functioning research facility, with over 1,110 buildings and 400 miles of paved roads. Some 536 anti-nuclear protests were held on its fringes between 1986 and 1994.

You might expect it to be fenced off far beyond the public view. Remarkably, it isn’t. While would-be visitors need to apply in advance, tours are conducted every month, and are hugely popular; at time of writing, they are booked up until June 2023. Subsequent dates will be announced in March (see nnss.gov/pages/PublicAffairsOutreach/NNSStours.html).

Trinity Site (USA)

The Nevada Test Site was not the only location where mushroom clouds billowed above the American West. The Trinity Site was the original; the chosen place where the Manhattan Project moved from the laboratory to reality, and the weapon that would be unleashed on Japan a month later made its prototype debut on July 16 1945.

As with its Nevada counterpart, this largely off-limits corner of New Mexico is still very much active. It is part of the White Sands Missile Range, in the lower half of the “Breaking Bad State”, roughly 100 miles north of the border with Mexico proper. And as with the Nevada Test Site, it is open to the public, on a very limited basis. Open days are held twice a year, on the first Saturday of April and the third Saturday of October (which means April 1 and October 21 in 2023). (Full details at home.army.mil/wsmr/index.php/contact/public-affairs-office/trinity-site-open-house).

Although this is a pertinent dot on the planet’s historical map, there is – perhaps unsurprisingly – little to see. All that remains of the 30-metre tower that was destroyed in the 1945 explosion is a small stub of concrete. A four-metre obelisk marks the point of detonation.

A sign at the Trinity Site - Getty
A sign at the Trinity Site - Getty

Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center (USA)

This offshoot of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center), based at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, is home to one of the world’s more divisive artefacts. The Enola Gay was, of course, the aircraft – a Boeing B-29 Superfortress – which dropped the first nuclear bomb in anger, onto Hiroshima. As of 2003, it has found a home next to aerospace celebrities such as the Space Shuttle Discovery and an Air France Concorde.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (Japan)

Hiroshima’s most important museum (hpmmuseum.jp) is an inevitably sombre document to the darkness which engulfed it. Exhibits include victims’ possessions – such as a scorched child’s tricycle. The adjacent Peace Memorial Park features the city’s most recognisable structure – the remnants of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. Better known as the “Atomic Bomb Dome”, this unnerving ruin has been left as a wordless reminder of 1945.

The remnants of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall - Getty
The remnants of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall - Getty

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum (Japan)

The second Japanese city to suffer an atomic explosion is sometimes overlooked as a footnote to Hiroshima’s story – but tells its own tale in detailed fashion at this excellent modern museum (nagasakipeace.jp/en/visit/abm), with its blistered glass bottles, survivor accounts and a clock which stopped at the fatal moment (11:02am). Adjacent, the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall is an elegant tribute to the dead, all glass walls and tumbling water – while the nearby Peace Park has thought-provoking statues, and a column marking the hypocenter.