Architect's rendering of DRI's Southern Nevada Science Center (SNSC) Phase II in Las Vegas.

Late this spring, the Desert Research Institute will break ground on Phase II of its Southern Nevada Science Center, which will add more than 61,000 square feet to DRI's existing campus (See "Planning and Building DRI's Southern Nevada Campus Expansion,"). The building will support DRI's varied archaeological efforts, including new laboratories as well as a state-of-the-art archaeological repository. DRI's Center for Arid Lands Environmental Management will also be housed in the new facility.

In addition to offering crucial space for the expansion of DRI's research activities, the new building will be home to the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute (NATHI), a one-of-a-kind facility including state-of-the-art archives and a history museum that, combined, will describe and document the extraordinary technological effort that took place on America's primary Cold War nuclear battlefield, the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Overall, it will also showcase the role Nevada's desert played in the struggle to prevent global nuclear annihilation.

For more than fifty years, the test site, a Rhode Island-sized desert expanse, was America's designated Cold War "ground zero." Before testing was suspended in 1992, more than nine hundred nuclear detonations rocked the site's valleys and mesas, proving the technical feasibility of doing the unthinkable: conducting a nuclear war. The nuclear weapons testing program grew with southern Nevada, at one time employing more than 10,000 people, as the boom of splitting atoms kept pace with Las Vegas' exploding gaming and entertainment industries.

With the Cold War over, and the threat from the former Soviet Union gone, humanity appears to have "won" by surviving the nuclear threat. The central theme of American defense planning for well over three decades was the grim strategy of MAD-mutually assured destruction. The "assured" piece of the equation was where the Nevada Test Site's employees came into the picture, proving unquestionably the reliability and predictability of a devastating response should the United States ever be attacked.

The idea for establishing the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute to chronicle this era emerged over several decades as an outgrowth of public policy and the needs and desires of various groups of scientists and NTS managers.

In the late 1980s, as the test site's primary atomic testing program began winding down, several of the early, long-serving agency officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in Nevada began discussing the possibility that the historical record of this crucial human experience might easily be lost if preservation efforts weren't begun.

Just a hint of what's to come. Bruce Church, former assistant manager for Environment, safety, Security and Health on the Nevada Test Site and now president of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, stands amid the fraction of items in the present historical exhibit at DOE's North Las Vegas headquarters. The temporary exhibit is open to the public on weekday afternoons until it moves to the new NATHI museum space in 2003. Photo by L. Glass, DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Public Afairs Office.

Bruce Church retired from DOE's Nevada Operations Office in 1995 as assistant manager for Environment, Safety, Security and Health, and now is president of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, a volunteer group dedicated to the establishment of the NATHI. Church says that the initial motivating concern for the NATHI was the potential loss of the documents compiled and housed in the Coordination and Information Center (CIC). This later expanded to include the concern over the loss that was occurring for the extensive technological infrastructure of the NTS, developed since the early 1950s. This disappearance of hardware was being caused by downsizing the infrastructure of the NTS and removing excess materials and facilities unneeded for the present and foreseeable mission of the NTS. Another concern was the loss of the institutional memory as the NTS workforce dwindled from a peak of 10,000 to about 3,000 in the mid-1990s.

Within DRI, archaeologists and anthropologists began to press for a permanent repository to store and maintain the tens of thousands of artifacts recovered on the Nevada Test Site as well as interpretative laboratory facilities for analyzing the materials. Over the years, these artifacts have moved among temporary spaces in various DRI locations in Las Vegas and Reno.

"DRI needed a new facility to properly manage the collected materials and provide suitable research space for our staff," says DRI President Stephen G. Wells. "It was a matter of being able to meet our obligations to our research sponsors and accommodate the continuing success of our scientists in developing excellent research programs. Simply stated, we needed space."

Getting a little cramped, and more on the way. This view of part of the Coordination and Information Center's records storage area clearly demonstrates the need for additional archival space for the records of America's nuclear testing program. The new NATHI facility will not only provide that space, but will also improve the access fo scholars who use the archives for historical research. -Photo by L. Glass, DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Public Afairs Office.

Meanwhile, DOE was also facing new regulations and requirements designed to make nuclear testing program records more easily accessible to the public. In 1981, DOE opened the CIC to collect and create public access to all historical documents, records, and data about radioactive fallout from all-not just Nevada's-U.S. nuclear testing.

"Our first concern was to get all of the documents and records organized in a professionally managed and retrievable archival system," says Roxanne Dey, DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration's NATHI project manager. "We were aware that the location inside DOE's highly secured North Las Vegas Headquarters compound might not be the most publicly accessible place, but we didn't have any other options at the time."

In December 1993, DOE implemented its "Openness Initiative," declassifying hundreds of thousands of additional documents and records to allow historians their first, unfettered access to the minutiae of America's conduct of the Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing program. As a result, the 360,000-piece CIC collection is expected to expand to nearly a half million items by the time the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute opens in 2003. Bechtel Nevada, which manages operations at the Nevada Test Site and its related facilities and laboratories, including the CIC, anticipates a continuing, rapid expansion of documents, records, and artifacts as collection efforts intensify.

"The NATHI project has really galvanized the efforts of people in the nuclear weapons community and many of those who have retired and left the program to dig deep and locate important records," says Martha E. DeMarre, manager of the CIC. "We can envision thousands of additional items that will greatly increase the scholarly value of these archives as a historical resource."

"With his own hands"...Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, assembled the "Sedan" device, which created the biggest subsidence crater on the Nevada Test Site, the only location on the NTS listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Sedan test, part of a program to demonstrate peaceful uses of nuclear devices, was conducted to determine if the devices could be used to excavate a harbor off the Australian coast so ships could reach untapped iron ore deposits. After retiring as U.S. Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs, Wade began pushing for preservation of the history of the nuclear testing program. -Photo by John Gurzinski, courtesy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, began promoting the idea of a comprehensive historical center focusing on the nuclear testing program. Wade was well-acquainted with the need, having retired from the U.S. Department of Energy in 1989 after 31 years with the nation's nuclear program. His three-plus decades with the program included service in Washington, D.C. as well as a term as deputy manager of the Nevada Operations Office-the Las Vegas headquarters for NTS activities. From Wade's perspective, the NATHI represents a "process of historical convergence." "All of these things-the need to make CIC records more accessible to historians and the public, the requirement for archaeological facilities, and the passing opportunity to preserve this part of the history of how America fought the Cold War-were converging in a time and place that seemed right."

Familiar with DRI's work at the NTS and aware of DRI's own space needs, in 1993 Wade and other NTS Historical Foundation members began working with senior DOE officials and DRI scientists and administrators on a plan to combine the historical, archaeological, and archival activities of DOE and DRI in a single location.

Success came in 1999. Led by Nevada State Senators Dina Titus and William Raggio, the Nevada Legislature approved funding for the construction of the NATHI as Phase II of DRI's Southern Nevada Science Center. Dr. Titus, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor and Cold War scholar, shepherded a second, supplemental appropriation through the legislature in 2001. Two-thirds of the approximately $12.5 million project will come from state bonds to be retired by the proceeds of a long-term lease of archival and office and laboratory space to the U.S. Department of Energy. The balance will come from private financing obtained by DRI.

Wade and the NTS Historical Foundation received a critical boost for the new museum last year when U.S. Senator Harry Reid secured a $1 million appropriation for installing exhibits in the new NATHI facility. The Foundation found friends in other high places, as well, winning affiliate status from the Smithsonian Institution for the new
museum (See "In Good Company… ").

The building design by JMA Architecture Studios includes a conference and symposium center to support the scholarly interaction that NATHI's archives and collections are expected to foster. An international museum exhibit designer has provided a series of proposed NATHI displays. (See "Take a Tour of Our New Museum,").

The Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute will encompass a topic as broad and deep as the Cold War, while living up to the endorsement of the Smithsonian, one of the world's top historical technology museums. Although the task is imposing, the dedication, expertise, and vision of NATHI's planners ensures that the new facility's archives, displays, and laboratories will preserve for generations to come the story of an unparalleled technological battle that was fought in the Nevada desert.

- John Doherty