The focus narrowed to a large, flat expanse in the Groom Lake valley, the same valley where the CIA was running its U-2 program. There, to the northwest of Area 51, lay a perfect sixteen-square-mile flat parcel of land—relatively virgin territory that no one was using. A record search determined that all grazing rights to the area had been “extinguished,” meaning that local farmers and ranchers were already prohibited from allowing their livestock to roam there. Then weapons-test planners made an aerial inspection of Groom Lake. Colonel E. A. Blue joined the project’s director, Dr. Shreve, in an overhead scout. In a classified memo, the two men joked about how they spotted a herd of cows roaming around the chosen site, “60 to 80 cattle who hadn’t gotten the word,” and that “somehow information must be gotten to them and their masters.” Gallows humor for cows.
A land-use deal between the Department of Defense, which controlled the area for the Air Force, and the Atomic Energy Commission, the civilian organization that controlled the test site, was struck. As it was with the rest of the loosely defined Area 51, this desired land parcel lay conveniently just outside the legal boundaries of the Nevada Test Site, to the northeast. This allowed the 57 Project to fall under the rubric of a military operation, which could assist in shielding it from official Atomic Energy Commission disclosures, the same way calling it a safety test did. Anyone with oversight regarding unsafe nuclear tests simply didn’t know where to look. In the end, the land designation even allowed Project 57 to be excluded from official Nevada Test Site maps. As of 2011, it still is.
In March of 1957, workers cordoned off the area in preparation for Project 57. The nuclear warhead was flown from Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico to the Yucca Lake airstrip at the test site and transferred to Building 11, where it would remain in storage until explosion day. Since it needed its own name for record-keeping purposes, officials decided to designate it Area 13.
Richard Mingus was tired. The twenty-four-year-old Ohio native had been working double shifts at the Sands hotel for three years and four months, ever since he returned home from the front lines of the Korean War. Newly married, Mingus and his wife, Gloria, had their first baby on the way. The Sands was the most popular spot on the Las Vegas Strip. It was the place where high rollers and partygoers went for entertainment, where they could hear the Rat Packers sing in the Copa Room. The restaurant at the Sands was a first-class operation, with silver service delivered from over-the-shoulder trays. Richard Mingus was proud to work there. Once he even got to wait on Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher. But by the summer of 1956, the novelty of hearing celebrity singers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. perform had taken a backseat to the financial uncertainty that comes with a waiter’s life. When he’d learned Gloria, the light of his life, was pregnant, Mingus became elated. Then economic insecurity settled in. In addition to having a little one on the way, Mingus supported his widowed mother back east.
Looking back, Mingus reflects on that time in his life. “You can never guess what the future holds,” he says. That summer, life dealt Richard and Gloria Mingus a cruel blow. Gloria delivered prematurely, and their baby died in the hospital. They were without health insurance, and the bills accompanying the tragedy left Richard Mingus overwhelmed. Gloria became despondent. “I needed a solid job. And one that came with hospital benefits,” Mingus explains. “It was time for me to find a profession. So I asked one of the waiters at the Sands if he knew about anything.” Mingus learned the federal government was hiring security guards. The following morning he drove over to Second Avenue and Bonanza Street to apply.