Wahmonie, Nevada (Burnt Harbors) (Collector's Edition)

- 190x125mm printed resource
- 24pp saddle-stitched
- Matte cover & interior
- 8cm CDR
- Unique cruciform enclosure
- A double-sided folded A4 print of ‘revisioned’ photographs from the Library of Congress Historic American Engineering Record
- A download card for the recording ‘Wahmonie, Nevada’
- A download card for the exclusive recording ‘Remote Site Survey, Area 26’
- Numbered & signed
- Edition of 50

 

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View photographs of this edition here

 

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Digital-only download available from Bandcamp

Continued fieldwork by CF Moore, this time venturing into the north-eastern reaches of the Mojave Desert. From Death Valley to Rhyolite along Route 374, from Beatty to Amargosa Valley along Hwy 95, before arriving at the southern perimeter of the Nevada National Security Site on the Mercury Hwy.

This is the closest point of public access to Wahmonie Flats, and the ‘cultural resource’ designated as ‘Site 26NY9843’. According to a Desert Research Institute report, ‘components of site 26NY9843 were a small and diffuse prehistoric lithic artifact scatter, consisting of a few flakes, and the abandoned historic mining town of Wahmonie dating to the late 1920s’. But, as SW Paher noted in 1970, ‘since the 1950s the ghost of Wahmonie have been disturbed by atomic testing’.

Specifically, Wahmonie became the site of the Pluto program, which was responsible for ‘the development and testing of a nuclear reactor for a ramjet propulsion system, an important military goal involving the feasibility and applicability of nuclear-propelled low-altitude missiles in the national defense of the United States’.

The research was later abandoned, and the site was classified as a Radioactively Contaminated Area, with the Corrective Action Unit designation CAU 117. As of 2009, following extensive ‘clean up’ measures, the area is now considered to be in a ‘safe interim configuration for future demolition’.

The larger Nevada Test Site region contains archaeological material dating back to the Paleoindian Period, ca. 12,000 to 7000 BP. Artifacts discovered there include ‘rare fluted projectile points’. This Paleolithic context to America’s nuclear project finds an unnerving resonance in the words of the current incumbent of the White House, who, in addressing Iran – a would-be nuclear power – threatened to ‘bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong’. Although a working nuclear ramjet missile was never built on Site 26NY9843, notwithstanding the subsequent ‘clean-up’ activities, it is interesting to reflect on what remains will be left to future archaeologists, especially in the wake of current and future wars.