February 19, 2001
My Internet browsing brought me to a webpage with a nugget of nearby trivia. Only a hour or so away was a site where they U.S. Government conducted an underground nuclear explosion test. Only a dozen or so sites in the United States can lay claim to a nuclear explosion, and this nearby site was easily accessible by State highway.
Off I went to Churchill County to the northern part of the Sand Springs Range. In less than 10 miles on paved roads from US 50, I was on top of the range at a place called Gote Flat. It was here in 1963 that the Department of Defense and Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 12-kiloton nuclear device around 1,200 feet below the surface. Forty years later there is not much to show that event ever occurred. Concrete pads, shards of metal and cable, caps on monitoring wells, and scrapped ground. But there's not too many places where you can stand at ground zero and say I'm standing on top of a nuclear blast, but Gote Flat is one.
Web Links
Here's a Nevada blast site you can visit - Las Vegas Sun 10/29/13
US Department of Energy Fact Sheet on the Shoal Site
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| The northern part of the Sand Springs Range |
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| The Project Shoal area at Gote Flat |
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| A monitoring well head in the Project Shoal area |
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| A salt bed at Four Mile Flat as viewed from Gote Flat |
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