Historical Marker

Trinity Site


The nuclear age began with the detonation of world’s first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945. J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory, stated that he suggested “Trinity, “perhaps from the poetry of John Donne. After the blast, he was said to have recalled the line from the Bhagavad Gita, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”.

New Mexico has been inhabited by various indigenous groups for thousands of years, including the Puebloan peoples who built elaborate cliff dwellings such as those found at the Bandelier National Monument.