What Were the 8 Possible Test Sites For the Atomic Bomb?

The atomic bomb test­ing por­tion of the Man­hat­tan Project, code named the Trin­ity Project, had 8 pos­si­ble test sites. These pos­si­ble sites were¹ -

1. The Tularosa Basin near Alam­ogordo, NM
2. The lava beds (now the El Mal­pais National Mon­u­ment) south of Grants, NM (which could have been fun, as the west­erly winds prob­a­bly could have car­ried fall­out to Albuquerque)
3. The Alam­ogordo Bomb­ing and Gun­nery Range, today known as the White Sands Mis­sile Range
4. An Army train­ing area north of Blythe, Cal­i­for­nia, in the Mojave Desert
5. San Nico­las Island (one of the Chan­nel Islands) off the coast of South­ern California
6. A desert area south­west of Cuba (NM) and north of Thoreau
7. Padre Island south of Cor­pus Christi, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico
8. San Luis Val­ley, near mod­ern day Great Sand Dunes National Mon­u­ment, located near Mosca, Co.

Gen­eral Leslie Groves had decided on using the area north of Blythe, but opted not to use because he didn’t want to have to deal with the base’s com­man­der, Gen. George S. Pat­ton. So the “honor” fell to Alamogordo.

1. I got this list from World Wide School. [↩]