Was area 51 the same location where they did the nuclear testing in the 50's? I remember seeing video of vegas and people saying they could see the mushroom clouds from the strip and felt the earth shake like an earthquake. Funny thing is, nobody at the time in Vegas seemed concerned with it and accptted it as part of living in Nevada.
The areas are different the Atom tests were at Yucca Mountain (sp?) and area 51 is where things like the stealth planes were tested.
Area 51 is located on and just south of the dry lake bed of Groom Lake in Lincoln County, in the Emigrant Valley, bounded by the Papoose and Groom Mountain Ranges. The surrounding land is all part of Nellis Air Force Base and its bombing and test range. The small settlement known as Rachel is located in the Sand Spring Valley, on S.R. 375 (officially named the Extraterrestrial Highway), and is about 25 miles north of the "secret" airfield and base.
Nuclear bomb tests were conducted in many areas of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and in the surrounding Nellis Air Force Range (NAFR) in Nye County (which ironically, is shaped similar to a mushroom cloud). Yucca
Mountain, on the western edge of the NAFR (east of Beatty) is where the government proposes to build a repository for the radioactive waste generated by the nation's nuclear power plants (clean energy? yeah, RIGHT!). Yucca
Flat (a/k/a Plutonium Valley), further east near the center of the NTS, is where many of the early, above-ground bomb tests took place. I believe others took place in nearby Frenchman Flat and Jackass Flats (soon to be renamed "Kanye West Flats").
If you've even been up in the Spring Mountains (NW of Vegas), and taken the road that crosses the ridge line (S.R. 158) and connects Kyle Canyon (where the town of Mt. Charleston is sited on S.R. 157) and Lee Canyon (where S.R. 156 leads up to the small ski/snowboard area), there's an overlook along it that provides a broad vista across the southern sections of the NTS. I believe many of the adventurous residents of southern Nevada back in the late 1940s and 1950s gathered at that particular spot to watch the atomic tests. I wonder how much radiation exposure they received in doing that? But the bright flashes of the bomb detonations were very visible down in Las Vegas itself, especially since many of the tests occurred in the pre-dawn hours.
Regards,
Speed Racer