California nearly used atomic bombs to help bypass Route 66 in California

California highway planners seriously considered the use of nearly two dozen atomic bombs to level a mountain range so a new alignment of Interstate 40 could be built through the Mojave Desert and thus bypass Route 66.

Newsmen and other observers watch a cloud of dust emerge in the distance several seconds after an underground nuclear detonation near Fallon, Nevada.

It sounds like the stuff of urban legend, but it’s true.

James Gilboy at TheDrive.com wrote about the details, including vintage images, about Operation Carryall during the mid-1960s.

As detailed in the Atomic Energy Commission’s 1963 report to Congress, Carryall sought to blast a path through the Bristols about 11 miles north of Amboy—a tourist destination along Route 66—as indicated in the maps above. Here, engineers proposed boring 22 holes along a 10,940-foot stretch of mountainside, each of them 36 inches wide, 343 to 783 feet deep, and lined with corrugated metal. Nuclear devices with yields between 20 and 200 kilotons would be lowered into each of them for a combined yield of 1,730 kilotons, or about 115 times that of the “Little Boy” bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima less than two decades before.
An additional 100-kiloton device would also be detonated nearby to create a drainage basin, preventing flash floods from the nearby Orange Blossom Wash. In displacing an estimated 68 million tons of earth, the blasts would create a canyon with a maximum depth of roughly 350 feet, through which the ATSF railway and the Division of Highways could route two rail lines and up to eight lanes of traffic, respectively.

The highway boys were set on detonating the a-bombs in 1966 and I-40 construction to begin the following year.

A worker prepares for an underground nuclear detonation near Fallon, Nevada.

The idea seemingly would be doomed by problems from radioactive fallout, damaging a gas pipeline in the area, structural damage at Amboy and dust from the blasts causing visibility problems in the region.

But what ultimately sunk the project was the inability to run two test blasts — Buggy and Galley — before the big work could proceed.

California highway officials eventually ran out of patience and decided to build a highway through the Mojave Desert by traditional means. I-40 linked Barstow and Needles by 1973.

Many scientists at the time were cavalier about the effects of multiple atomic bombs being detonated in the desert. One nuclear weapons scientist — M. L. Merritt of the Sandia National Laboratories — was an exception. He projected fallout would carry twice as far as projected and deliver up to five times the forecast radiation dosage. 

Earl Swift also detailed Project Carryall in his 2011 book “The Big Roads” (Amazon link), which remains a definitive history of the U.S. highway and interstate system.

Swift wrote why using a-bombs to carve a path through the Bristol Mountains seemed so attractive:

The nuclear option would get it done in a flash and at a 36 percent discount. All the state would need to do after the explosions was to clean up, which wouldn’t be too tough of a job — little of the rubble would be more than two feet across. Sure, a few “rock missiles” might be lobbed about, and underground rumbles might crack the plaster or knock down knickknacks at Amboy, a town a few miles to the south, but all of the risks could be manageable with a little more research.
Nowadays that seems a brashly optimistic claim, given that Project Carryall’s bombs were to flex destructive muscle at least sixty times beefier than that deployed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. […] See, these would be “clean” nuclear explosions, which were touted as somehow safer than the standard, radiation-spewing variety. In fact, construction crews likely could spend a full shift in the new pass just four days after the blasts.

The fact scientists underestimated the effect of blowing up a mountain range with atomic bombs now seems apparent. The Trinity Site in southern New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was tested, still remains radioactive nearly 80 years later. To this day, the National Park Service allows only two days a year where tourists can visit the site.

Do read the Swift book for a three-page overview of the project. Gilboy’s article adds a lot of new details and fascinating images from government documents of the hair-brained idea.

(Images from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission report to Congress in 1963)

4 thoughts on “California nearly used atomic bombs to help bypass Route 66 in California

  1. And the people in charge of the proposed atomic bomb road construction were ‘intelligent, educated’ professionals!!!! Just think if ordinary average Americans had been the ones making the decision. Could it have been any worse?

  2. Your comment that the site opens to the public only two days of the year is misleading because it implies that it largely remains closed due to high levels of radioactivity. Though we should never take radioactivity lightly (obviously), the webpage you linked to for the Trinity Site states a different reason for barring tourists the other days of the year:
    “The rest of the year the site is closed to the public because it lies within the impact zone for missiles fired into the northern part of WSMR.”

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