Touring Trinity, the Birthplace of Nuclear Dread A recent visit to the site of the first atomic bomb explosion offered desert vistas, (mildly) radioactive pebbles and troubling reflections. Twice a year, the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico is opened to visitors seeking to view the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945.Credit...Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Aug. 3, 2021Updated 10:20 a.m. ET TRINITY SITE, N.M. — Once, in another lifetime, I witnessed an atomic explosion. This was in the 1960s at the Nevada Test Site, a vast area about an hour northwest of Las Vegas where the American military tested bombs. I was working for EG&G, a military contracting company that, among other atomic chores, supplied all the instrumentation for the test site; it is now part of a company called Amentum. My job, to study the effects of nuclear explosions on the atmosphere, was sufficient to keep me out of the Vietnam War draft.