Area 51: A Military Base Which Does Not Officially Exist

I was driving home from work today and tuned into a story on NPR's Fresh Air about a new book about Area 51. The book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, was written by Annie Jacobson, an editor at Los Angeles Times Magazine. The interview was mesmerizing and covered a variety of subjects. I haven't read the book yet but if it's anything like the show today, I expect it is damn good.

Here is an excerpt from the book: "Area 51 is the nation's most secret domestic military facility. It is located in the high desert of southern Nevada, seventy-five Miles north of Las Vegas. Its facilities have been constructed over the past sixty years around a flat, dry lake bed called Groom Lake. The U.S. government has never admitted it exists. Key to understanding Area 51 is knowing that it sits inside the largest government-controlled land parcel in the United States, the Nevada Test and Training Range. Encompassing 4,687 square miles, this area is just a little smaller than the state of Connecticut — three times the size of Rhode Island, and more than twice as big as Delaware. Set inside this enormous expanse is a smaller parcel of land, 1,350 square miles, called the Nevada Test Site, the only facility like it in the continental United States. Beginning in 1951, on the orders of President Harry Truman, 105 nuclear weapons were exploded above ground at the site and another 828 were exploded underground in tunnel chambers and deep, vertical shafts. The last nuclear weapons test on American soil occurred at the Nevada Test Site on September 23, 1992. The facility contains the largest amount of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium in the United States not secured inside a nuclear laboratory."