The shuttle bus lurches to the right as we take a sharp turn off of Highway 95. Ahead of us is the badging office and the entry gates to the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in Mercury, Nevada. It was once known as the Nevada Test Site and before that it was called the Nevada Proving Grounds.
Never heard of it? You might actually know a little something about this place. You see, there is this one little piece of land adjacent to the NNSS facility that gets a lot of attention. It’s called Area 51.
That infamous spot is only one small part of this enormous, desolate facility in the Nevada desert that measures roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island.