Lucy Jane Santos, the author of Chain Reactions, is prepared to go anywhere to look for the history of radioactivity. Even Las Vegas. Fortunately, she found that the sinful city still radiates with its atomic heritage, which hasn’t decayed yet.
Over the last — almost — decade of tracing the history of radioactive elements – specifically radium and uranium — I’ve been to many places in the quest to unpick our complex relationship with radioactivity.
This has translated into experiencing a radon bath in the Czech Republic, a tour of Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s old office in Paris and a whizz up to the top of the Atomium in Belgium (the site of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, which had a focus on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy).
But there was one place that I was saving right to the end – largely because the thought of it rather terrified me. It wasn’t a fear of radioactivity that prompted this hesitancy but Las Vegas’s reputation as a party town – a rather overwhelming prospect!
And why is Las Vegas on a radioactive hunter’s hit list?
Because between 1951 and 1992 the US government exploded 100 atomic bombs near there before moving their testing underground in 1961, at which point they blew up another 828.
This programme started in the early 1950s with the establishment of a testing site on the US mainland in Nevada (prior to this they had used sites in the Pacific).
A former airbase, approximately 65 miles east of Las Vegas, was chosen as the ideal place – meeting the criteria of being far enough away from major population centres whilst also being secure and easily accessible for the huge amount of people that were needed to run the testing programme, from scientists, to clerical personnel and other skilled workers, many of who were eventually housed at a purpose built encampment – Camp Mercury.
Accommodation for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who would be stationed there over the course of the 1950s was also built nearby.
All of this activity was rather unprecedented for the desert city of Vegas to have on its doorstep. In the early 1950s it was still a relatively small place, with only around 25,000 residents and under a million tourists a year.
Its growth hadn’t been without issues (largely of the criminal underworld variety), but by the early 1950s there were 15 resort hotels, 38 commercial hotels and 286 motels. The five main hotels on the strip, El Rancho, Flamingo, Thunderbird, Last Frontier and Desert Inn, would soon be joined by the Sahara, Sands and Stardust, to name but a few.
And there were huge concerns around what it would mean for this fledgling tourist industry to have atomic bombs going off so close by.
On 27 January 1951 the first test of the Operation Ranger series was detonated at Frenchman Flat, a dried-up lakebed in the middle of the testing site. Over in Vegas there were reports of shaking walls and a resident or two who had been tossed out of their bed (the tests were always held early in the morning) but nothing as dire as had been predicted.
After the first few explosions had passed without incident the city wholeheartedly embraced the bomb. Residents would wake their children up to view the spectacle and as they settled into the strange rhythm of the various testing series, atomic imagery gradually integrated into the town’s culture. The bomb became another part of the experience of visiting Las Vegas, merging with the city’s glamourous reputation, the thrill of gambling and a pervading sense of otherworldliness.
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To ensure that tourists were aware of the upcoming atomic tests, calendars were distributed with the dates and times. Some hotels even provided packed box lunches for their customers to take to picnics at Angel Peak, a mountain located 45 miles away which offered great views.
Many of the hotels, motels and casinos had atomic test offerings that were designed to bring in the public. At the Sands you could go to one of their ‘Atom Watch’ parties with breakfast served on the terrace. And at the Atomic View Motel it was possible to lie by the pool and watch the tests from the comfort of your lounge chair. The Desert Inn served up their version of the ‘Atomic Cocktail’ during parties in its third-floor lounge, the Sky Room. The tipple was made from equal parts vodka, brandy and champagne, with a dash of sherry.
In the Venus Room at the New Frontier, there was a unique performer billed as ‘the nation’s only atomic-powered singer’, none other than Elvis Presley, in his first Las Vegas appearance in 1956. Variety hailed him as an ‘atomic-age phenomenon’, while Time declared him to be ‘hotter than a radioactive yam’.
The publicity machine in Las Vegas proved to be remarkably successful in reshaping public perception of atomic testing, shifting it away from its initial associations with death, destruction, and towards a more glamorous connotation.
Whilst the cultural impact of the bombs had faded by the end of the decade, and disappeared completely as the tests moved underground, I wanted to see if there were any survivors of the atomic past in 2024. I really hadn’t expected much – after all Vegas isn’t really known for its commitment to preserving its history – but I was pleasantly surprised.
For more about the history behind the U. S’s atomic programme there is the magnificent Atomic Testing Museum, which is a short taxi ride or around half an hour walk from the Flamingo Hotel on the Strip.
The Stardust atomic sign is in pieces but largely preserved at the Neon Museum and one of the sites of the bomb watching parties – Atomic Liquor – is not only still there but still serving drinks.
All in all this researcher was very glad to have braved the heat, the crowds and the casinos.
Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium by Lucy Jane Santos is published on 4 July, 2024.
Lucy Jane Santos specialises in health, leisure and beauty especially where they intersect with science and technology. Chain Reactions looks at the fascinating, often-forgotten, stories that can be found throughout the history of the element.
Lucy has also written about How to radium party (safely!) and a review of the Art Deco by the Sea exhibition in 2020.
And if you think taking a radon bath is dangerous, have a look at Elizabethan medicine: spectacularly wrong – and likely to kill you by SW Perry
You may also be interested in David Boyle‘s review of Oppenheimer.
And, for the other side of the story, Mary Chamberlain looks back at the 1960s anti-nuclear movement in The Partisan, socialist cafe and creative centre.
Images:
- Atomic Liquor, Las Vegas: Anthony for Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
- Lucy Jane Santos takes a radium bath: supplied by and © the author
- Sands Hotel, 1950s postcard: Brian for Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
- Operation Buster-Jangle, Dog test, with troops participating in exercise Desert Rock I, 1 November, 1951: Federal Government of the United States via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Billboard advertisement for Elvis Presley, 10 March, 1956: Wikimedia (public domain)
