The business of bombs

Nevada has long been known for having industries that other states have shunned in the past or still do, such as gambling and prostitution.

Decades ago, the Las Vegas area also was home to another unique line of work: blowing up nuclear bombs.

Starting during the Cold War, federal officials detonated 100 above-ground nuclear weapons some 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas at the Nevada Test Site from 1951-62. After such tests were banned, the U.S. conducted 828 underground detonations there, with the last one in 1992, according to the Nevada National Security Site, as the desert outpost is now known.

The mushroom clouds were a spectacle. According to PBS, Las Vegas’ chamber of commerce issued calendars with scheduled detonation times and choice viewing spots, and tourists had bombwatching picnics.

The test site also provided a big source of of non-casino employment.

During the 1960s, for instance, its peak employment total surpassed 12,000, and in the 1990s it reached nearly 10,500, according to Melissa Biernacinski, spokeswoman for the site’s operations management group.

Over the years, test site workers included engineers, heavy-equipment operators, welders and cooks, said Michael Hall, executive director of the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. Physicists who worked on the tests mainly lived in New Mexico and California and would fly in, he added.

This year, employment at the security site — which is contractor-operated and conducts experiments to support the national nuclear weapons stockpile — peaked at 3,239, Biernacinski said.