Larry Denson, with son Gage, takes photos of other family members in front of a Fat Man atomic bomb casing at Trinity Site. Photo: Ivan Pierre Aguirre / The New York Times

The stretch of New Mexico desert would seem endless if not for the mountain range looming high in the distance. It is the kind of place where drivers keep an extra close watch on their fuel gauge, and the closest neighbours are small towns, tiny specks of civilisation, dozens of miles away.

Yet on Saturday morning, the two-lane road winding toward the White Sands Missile Range was clogged with minivans, cars and motorcycles, a snake of vehicles stretching for miles, inching its way through a checkpoint. Decades ago, the remoteness of this area in south-central New Mexico attracted scientists looking to test the most destructive weapon mankind had ever created, sending up a radioactive cloud that blistered the sky. Trinity Site, as it became known, was where the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, just weeks before two atomic bombs were unleashed on Japan, effectively ending World War II.

These days, the rehearsal stage for calamity has become a tourist attraction. Saturday was one of the rare days, typically twice a year, when the public is allowed onto the 55,000-acre site. The events can draw thousands; Saturday set a record with 5534 visitors, including Boy Scout troops, classes on field trips and families.

A family gathers around a radioactive materials warning sign. Photo: Ivan Pierre Aguirre / The New York Times

Admission came with rules: Visitors were allowed to explore and photograph only in cordoned areas. Beware of rattlesnakes, the rules also warned, but not so much the radiation, which had fallen to levels low enough to no longer be a cause of concern. Still, a line formed to take selfies with a sign posted on a fence: "Caution Radioactive Materials."

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"This was on my bucket list," said Robert Simpson, 65, a veteran of the Air Force, who came from Rio Rancho, outside Albuquerque, with his wife and friends. "It makes the story real. You can study the battles all you want — that doesn't hit home. You have to go see the history."

As the 70th anniversary of the test approaches in July, interest in Trinity Site has surged, bringing more visitors to places — test sites, bunkers, museums — connected to the weapons. In Wyoming, state officials are proceeding with plans to turn a relic of the Cold War, a boarded-up missile facility, into a tourist attraction.

Children play inside of Jumbo, a containment vessel. Photo: Ivan Pierre Aguirre / The New York Times

"We're in a period where it's now becoming nostalgia," said Sharon Weinberger, a co-author of A Nuclear Family Vacation, who has visited sites in the Marshall Islands and Iran.

Trinity Site, declared a national historic landmark in 1975, has essentially become a monument. A black obelisk made of lava rock marks where the bomb was detonated. An old ranch house, about two miles away, is where scientists assembled the weapon. (The name Trinity Site is believed to be derived from a John Donne poem, delivered by J. Robert Oppenheimer, a leader of the Manhattan Project and a father of the atomic bomb.)

The site bears few visible scars from the explosion: A glasslike material called trinitite, made by sand melted in the heat of the blast, is still scattered on the grounds (and was being sold by a vendor outside the gate for $20 a piece). But there is no crater to climb into or scorched earth visible.

Sten Hasselquist measures radiation, which has fallen to levels low enough to no longer be a cause of concern. Photo: Ivan Pierre Aguirre / The New York Times

"You just see some good pasture," said Merle Burton, 79, who drove up from Deming, New Mexico. "That's not what you expect."

The appeal of the site is linked largely to its history as the birthplace of nuclear weapons and the debate generated by the technology. The nuclear hysteria of the Cold War and even the recent agreement over Iran's nuclear program can be traced to Trinity Site. "The atomic age started right here," Simpson said.

"This is kind of the mecca," said Cammy Montoya, a spokeswoman for the White Sands Missile Range. "This is the first. This is the marking point."

Many approached the site with a kind of reverence, acknowledging a conflict between being impressed by the ingenuity required to create the technology and fear of its destructive power. As home to the testing site and the laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico also takes considerable state pride in the nuclear program.

"It felt, for me, like a pilgrimage," said Janet Gagliano, 54, from Albuquerque. "It was the beginning of something that changed the history of mankind. It's humbling, overwhelming, and the whole landscape is so amazing — the vastness of the space. I can see why they picked here."

Lon Burnam, who travelled from Fort Worth, Texas, is a different kind of nuclear tourist. Over the years, Burnam, an activist, has taken part in demonstrations at the Nevada test site, at a nuclear plant in Kansas and in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the home of a national laboratory. "We've certainly not been good stewards of what we've created," said Burnam, 61, a former state legislator in Texas.

"You wonder how many people are out here out of curiosity," he added, taking stock of the crowd, "and how many will internalise the fact we have the capability to destroy our species."

Outside the missile range, a group of local residents led a small protest, claiming they are living with, and dying from, the health effects of the tests decades later.

Chris Morgan, who had travelled from San Luis Obispo, California, sat on the ground near the perimeter of the site, jotting down his observations in a notebook. From his vantage point, he took in the groups waiting for their turn for a picture next to the obelisk and the few who were roaming around, bent at the waist, scouring the ground for trinitite.

"It's young and old — all races and generations. It's neat to see, really, a cross section come out," he said. "They want to be here to experience the history."

He has visited hundreds of national parks, collecting stamps from each one and filling stacks of Moleskine notebooks, but this was more significant. Morgan, 42, has wanted to visit Trinity Site for 15 years.

"It's nice to sit back and let it sink in, and really get a sense of where you're at — you get to feel the wind, feel the sun and see the mountains," he said. "It's so important for people to get here and touch and feel a place like this."

The New York Times