Leaving Las Vegas

From chaos on the Strip to desolation in the desert

The southern Nevada desert is almost completely featureless at night until, from a startling distance, Las Vegas appears. It is a screaming embarrassment of lights stabbing into the sky, even before you get near the famed Strip. Even the suburban street lights seem brighter than anywhere else.

On the Strip, real estate is so scarce that even relatively recent casinos are demolished to build ever-newer, bigger, flashier ones. In contrast, the sprawling suburbs are surrounded by undeveloped land. In North Las Vegas, desert is giving way to cul-de-sacs at every turn, the building rush fueled by cheap real estate.

The suburbs faded out long before we reached the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles to the northwest. Abundant land, ample security and dry weather at NTS lead to a sort of benign neglect for unneeded buildings and equipment. Test structures are left where they fell, and why not? No one needs the land or the equipment, and the stuff isn't going anywhere.

Power supplies, a massive crane and other equipment are still present at a 10-story tower set up for a test that was canceled five years ago. A tank, irradiated in tests of uranium-tipped armor-piercing shells, was simply towed out into the flat. The "Huron King" chamber, used to test radiation effects on satellites, was simply shoved out of the way.

Most of the structures tested at Frenchmen Flat were left where they stood -- or where they fell. Thirty-six years after the last atmospheric tests, the remaining houses stand not due to any effort at restoration, but due to a very forgiving climate for wood.

Nearly anywhere else in the United States, these mementos would either have been consciously preserved, or vandalized, torn down, plowed under and paved over. In the American Southwest, they survive simply because they're not in anyone's way.