In all my wanderings of Nevada, one of the highlights has been all of the military machinery that I've encountered. There's nothing like the thrill of a supersonic jet rupturing my eardrums as it thunders by a few dozen feet off the ground; or climbing up on some rusting Cold War tank, while inwardly hoping the silent bomber circling above isn’t actively lining up a practice run on the very thing you’re standing on. Those experiences generate a kind of adrenaline you don’t get from a slot machine.
Still - for no reason that I can put my finger on - I've never really had an overwhelming desire to visit the multitude of nuclear test sites that seem to consume much of the Nevada landscape. The thought of wandering around craters - wondering if I'll start to glow in the dark - hasn’t had the same appeal as crawling over decommissioned armor and scheduling appointments for early-onset hearing aids.
Anyway, I figured I'd give one a shot. Maybe it'd be yet another rabbit hole I don't have time for. Because clearly, what I need is one more obsession to chase down on my adventures.
So, January 1968. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) decides the Nevada Test Site is getting a little crowded and maybe it’s time to try out a new patch of desert. They pick the Central Nevada Test Area (CNTA) - managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) - in Nye County. If you’ve ever driven through there, you know it’s the kind of place where you can get a flat and not see another human being until the next presidential administration. Perfect spot for a nuclear test, right? They decided to call it Project Faultless. Which was hilarious, because the ground was about to prove them very, very wrong.
Amazingly well-graded approach.
Now, if you’re a paperwork person, Faultless shows up under the official, bad-ass, test series name of Operation Crosstie. But if you talk to the scientists who actually cared about the data, they’ll tell you it was a Vela Uniform calibration shot. Crosstie was just the filing cabinet it got shoved into; Vela Uniform was the reason it existed.
Whatever it was called, the mission was simple enough: drill a shaft 3,200 feet deep, drop in a megaton device, and set it off on January 19, 1968. The goal was to see if this new site could handle big underground detonations without wrecking the countryside or alarming the neighbors, and to generate seismic data that would prove you could tell a nuke apart from an earthquake.
Not much out here under the clouds.
If you’re picturing Doom Town - mannequins in 1950s dresses, cars parked like it’s Sunday at the grocery store - forget it. Faultless wasn’t that. The Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 forced the AEC to go underground and changed nuclear explosions from atmospheric spectacles to seismic events.
Ahh, the good old days.
(Grabel - A 1953 test of a nuclear artillery projectile at the Nevada Test Site as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole.)
That meant that Faultless was bare‑bones desert science. Really, the only thing of note - besides some seismic gear scattered around the desert - was an 8-foot diameter steel pipe that was lowered into the shaft, to make lowering the device a little safer. Safer is important when you can be incinerated.
Desert designs around ground zero.
Pulling up to the glow stick.
When the device went off, the ground didn’t just rumble - it broke wide open. Two parallel faults ripped across the surface, boxing in that 340‑acre block of land, which pillowed up 15 feet, then dropped down ten feet below its previous elevation. The fractures stretched nearly 9,000 feet, with vertical displacements up to 15 feet and sideways shifts of 3 feet.
The shockwave was strong enough to rattle Ely - almost ninety miles away - where windows at White Pine High School shattered and residents got a very loud reminder of what experiencing an earthquake is really like. The one piece of good news: the radioactivity stayed underground. Still, the ground deformation was far worse than anyone had expected, it looked like the desert got punched in the face.
The radioactivity may have stayed underground, but everything was not OK. Lots of warnings about not excavating or drilling.
That steel pipe? After the blast collapsed the area around ground zero, it left the top ten feet naked in the desert. It’s still there today, sticking out of the ground with a plaque bolted on, like some kind of grim roadside attraction.
Smile!
Why clean up the site when it's cheaper to just add a plaque?
Plugged for safety.
The scientists didn’t need long to make their call. The CNTA was geologically unstable and not suitable for more high‑yield underground tests. They had another shaft nearby, codenamed Adagio, ready for a second shot, but that plan was quickly scrapped. Instead, the megaton‑class tests were moved to Amchitka Island, Alaska, where the next round was carried out in the early 1970s.
The seismic data from Faultless was still useful - it did help prove that nuclear blasts could be distinguished from earthquakes - but the CNTA was retired after just this one test. Crosstie got to keep it in the ledger, Vela Uniform got the science, and the BLM got their face-punched land back.
Pretty much par for the course for the BLM.
At least the camping wasn't crowded.
Sunset below the Hot Creek Range.
A new day, and as far as I could tell, I wasn't glowing.
It'd been an interesting few hours in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. I'd gotten a great night's sleep, so maybe that will be what brings me to nuclear test sites in the future. For now, I was off to more familiar grounds - assuming I wasn't abducted as I drove the extraterrestrial highway along the edge of Area 51.
The Whole Story
Finally! One of your locations where I’ve visited. I think our gang was there in 2013, if I’m not mistaken. We camped near an old cabin or two up in a canyon north and west of the pipe. And yeah, we didn’t see hardly anyone else out there either. One of the blessings of rural Nevada - at least in those days.
Nice! I followed a road up to the north and a bit west, but it pretty quickly became wilderness now, and the roads were fading away to nothing. Once I got home, I took a closer look at the map and some of them - though not the one I was one - seem to be cherry stemmed, so maybe someday in the future, I'll find myself at a cabin, wondering if it's the same one!
Some of the best roads and wildlife I’ve ever seen in Nevada are those that cut across the hot creek range. I’ll send pics.
Would love to see the pics!
You made it! Great narrative as always.
First time I was there was not long after I'd heard about it, in early 2009. Creepy was an understatement to describe how I felt at the time. Have visited several times since then. Creepy was still an apt description for the emotion I felt, every time.
@Todd, yep, 2013. We spent the night at Morey, to the northwest. Dan, worth a visit. You'll probably find more amusement than we did, and we found plenty. Also worth visiting in the area are the nearby substantial petroglyph site, and the pony express stop known as Pritchard's Station.
Somewhere in those years, I learned that a much-older-than-me cousin, who I knew was a nuclear engineer and spent much of his career at Lawrence Livermore, was involved with Crosstie. Unfortunately I was unable to reconnect with him before he passed.
And adding to Jeff Toiyabe Rossell's comment, the road through the hot creek range, and the stone cabin valley to the west, are utterly worth exploring.
Oh yeah and note the example of your "best gen" Taco in the photo. It's still in circulation in my group of fellow travelers though it's moved on to the next owner, and it's mods are are worth a discussion in itself. The owner at the time the photo was taken bought a gen3 and was the inspiration for me buying mine. And we can do a group chuckle about all the mods they need to be gen1-worthy. Lol...
There are a lot of interesting things out here in the desert. Some can no longer be photographed/videoed under government penalty. A while back the government erected some big/huge signs covering quite a few miles between here and EAFB stating that taking photos, making videos, or driving off of the main road onto any of the local gravel/dirt roads is prohibited and that the area is patrolled and surveilled and I have seen people pulled over by security so I guess they are serious. So, you camped at that underground blast site, have you noticed that you glow in the dark now? LOL
Yeah, I've seen a lot of that sort of signage out in the desert recently (well, more in the last few years than I did the first few) as well. I suppose they are trying to keep folks safe, at least, in theory.
I will say, not needing a headlamp anymore after camping at the blast site has been very convenient.
Bwaaahhh hahahaha!!
What a nice post to wake up to this morning. I was the DOE employee in the late 1990's responsible for environmental monitoring of air, water, and soil on and off the (then) Nevada Test Site and all of the "off-sites" like the one you mentioned on Amchitka. The protests of the Amchitka testing was the genesis of Greenpeace, by the way. But there are other underground nuclear test sites in Colorado, New Mexico, and Mississippi. The one in MS is managed by the Mississippi Forestry Commission and can be visited upon request. It is not otherwise open and is managed to return it to a longleaf pine ecosystem. I went there a couple of years ago and it is gorgeous. It is ironic how limited access to some of these cold war test sites and current military bases has allowed nature to thrive relatively unmolested.
Well, that's cool to hear, Doug. It always amazes me how I run into things that have such a personal connection to folks who end up seeing the stories, and I think it's just an indicator of how connected we really are; it's a shame that - at least these days - many find it so easy to ignore those connections for the us/them mentality stoked by social media and politics. I knew there were other underground sites in NV and NM, but I didn't know there were sites in CO And MS. Sounds like the Mississippi site is worth a visit, though probably only if I'm down there for something else; it's not a part of the country I find myself in, otherwise.
Would love to hear more stories about your time at the DOE, if there are ones you think I'd find interesting! 👍
Well, so many stories. Maybe some day around the campfire. But here is one.
We had several groundwater monitoring wells in an active bombing range on the Air Force's Tonopah Test Range north of the Test Site that we wanted to visit. We traveled about 2.5 hours NW of Las Vegas to an operating area near Tolicha Peak. You can easily find it on Google Maps. We had the proper permissions and clearances to enter the area and meet an escort to take us to the wells. (Unfortunately our wells sitting in the middle of old drilling pads looked somewhat like targets and occasionally they would get bombed.) The Sergeant assigned to us hopped into his 6-pack (4 door, 6 passenger 4X4) and led our vehicles to the NE on a nice two-track towards the distant playa. We stopped at a gate and waited until our appointed time when the active bombing range would be secured. Soon the radio crackled and we were cleared to pass through the gate into a specific range. We did so and proceeded to the next gate and again waited for permission. That granted, we headed into the next range for about 1/4 mile. Then, we heard on the radio that the range was not secure and to stop immediately. The Sergeant in the lead truck stopped, then backed up, leaving the road to back up next to my truck. I rolled down the window and asked what's up. He said he wanted to park next to me so we wouldn't look like a target caravan, and smiled. My neck hairs started to feel funny. In a couple of minutes we heard the sound of jets, and looking behind us, saw two A-10 Warthogs appear up from a canyon in the table lands to the rear and approach us fast and low. As they roared by they popped up then downward towards the target, then the smoke from the cannons, a delay until we heard that braaaat sound, then the distant explosions. After a few minutes we got the all clear and headed to the first well, passing bomb and missile parts here and there on either side of the road. The rest of the day was uneventful.
"The rest of the day was uneventful" is 100% the best line of that story, hahaha!
Hope you brought along an extra pair of undies, and OMG that had to be both exciting and scary! Love those A-10s. Thanks so much for sharing.