lmkaatlanta.blogg.se

But the name for the airspace above the lake and the secret test facility and base that would grow there was, irresistibly, "Dreamland." It was this airspace that made it special, the airspace where It would come to be called by many names: Groom Lake, Watertown, Paradise Groom Lake is set inside 4,742 square miles of restricted airspace, and nearly four million acres of bomb range-a space as big as a Benelux nation. The land sat like this for centuries before the asphaltĪnd metal buildings, the wooden barracks and hangars, arrived, turning it into the Shangri-la, the Forbidden Temple of black, or secret, aircraft. Once or twice a year, a couple of inches of rain leave a thin liquid layer, a mock lake, shimmering and wavy, whose evaporation rapidly smoothes it to a high polish. Relentless winds lift small pebbles and drive themĪcross the surface. Rocky Mountain sheep and wild burros often wander onto its surface, and for years the bare weathered horned skull of a sheep sat here, a Western cliche as accent mark. Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51īeyond the Jumbled Hills, in the wide Emigrant Valley of southern Nevada, bracketed by the Timpahute and Pahranagat ranges, lies Groom Lake, just one of many dry lakes that dot the desert reaches of Nevada and California, an expanse of white, hard alkaline