Southern Devices: Geology, Industry, and Atomic Testing in Mississippi?s Piney 
Woods 
 
by 
 
David Allen Burke 
 
 
 
 
A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of 
Auburn University 
in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the degree of  
Doctor of Philosophy 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
May 14, 2010 
 
 
 
 
Approved by 
 
William F. Trimble, Chair, Professor of History 
James R. Hansen, Professor of History 
Jennifer E. Brooks, Professor of History 
David T. King Jr., Professor of Geology 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ii 
Abstract 
 
 
 This work centers on the two underground atomic tests conducted in south central 
Mississippi on September 22, 1964, and December 3, 1966.  The region, known as the 
?Piney Woods,? hosted the two blasts, conducted by the United States Atomic Energy 
Commission, in a mammoth subterranean salt formation known as a ?salt dome.?  These 
salt domes are common along the Gulf Coast from Texas to the Mississippi-Alabama 
border.  The two tests, codenamed ?Project Dribble? were part of a larger test series, 
?Vela Uniform,? that sought to improve and create seismological methods to detect 
underground nuclear tests.  The two nuclear tests were followed by two methane/oxygen 
blasts under ?Project Miracle Play? to assess whether chemical explosions could simulate 
nuclear tests in an underground environment. 
The atomic test program at the Tatum Dome was the result of a unique 
combination of geological and industrial factors.  It succeeded in producing data 
considered crucial to nuclear weapons control negotiation and treaties, yet it failed to 
bring the nuclear industry into the Piney Woods.  Furthermore, many of the desired 
economic benefits failed to materialize due to the federal reliance on outside contractors 
to perform tasks at the site.  Unlike the long-term technological and cultural enthusiasm 
generated by federal projects such as NASA?s facility in Huntsville, the Dribble program 
generated initial excitement, which eventually turned to resentment.    
 iii 
 Citing a variety of archival materials, this work examines the development of 
Gulf Coast salt domes, the development of regional industry, and the relationship 
between Frank Tatum and the government, which sought to procure his land for the 
atomic tests.  Once committed to the Tatum Salt Dome, the AEC faced numerous 
technical and weather-related problems, ultimately succeeding in carrying out its test 
program there.  During this period, the Hattiesburg area, near the test site, sought to 
broaden its connection with the AEC by attracting a particle accelerator facility; an effort 
that ultimately failed.  Following land remediation, the Dribble site played an important 
role in the debate over nuclear waste storage in Mississippi salt domes.
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 iv 
Table of Contents 
 
 
Abstract????????????????????????????? .??...ii  
 
Introduction ? I Had No Idea.???????????????????????..1  
 
Chapter 1 Humble Origins.????????????????????????1 8 
 
Chapter 2 Timber, Oil, and Atoms....?????.???????????????3 3 
 
Chapter 3 The Road to Dribble..??????????????????????53  
 
Chapter 4 Cowboy and the Big Hole Theory....????.???????????? 79 
 
Chapter 5 MITRC, MCEC, and the Tatum Decision??.????????????9 7 
 
Chapter 6 Salmon Run...????????????????????????..12 2 
 
Chapter 7 Shoot That Damn Thing????????????????????..15 3 
 
Chapter 8 A Silver Lining and a Miracle Play..?.??????????????..1 79 
 
Chapter 9 Nuclear Waste...???????????????????????..20 2 
 
Conclusion-Costly Success...??????????????????????...22 6 
 
References??????????????????????????????23 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
Introduction 
 
I Had No Idea 
 
  
At ground-zero, some wag left a Confederate flag and a sign, ?The South will rise 
again!?  This it did by about 10 cm amidst a cloud of dust.  Observers five km away 
heard a ?whoomph? and felt a shock comparable to jumping off a street curb.  However, 
the surface ground roll did not die down as quickly as expected, and later homeowners as 
far away as Hattiesburg asked to be reimbursed for cracked plaster.1 
  
It happened on the morning of September 22, 1964.  After years of careful 
planning and frustration, a nuclear device detonated below the wooded countryside in 
south central Mississippi.  Unleashing a force roughly one-third that of the bomb that 
destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, the explosion produced seismic waves 
that traveled outwards from the subterranean shot point.  These were monitored from 
nearby stations and from around the world.  This test was followed a little more than two 
years later by a second, much smaller device that hardly registered at all, and unlike its 
predecessor, caused no damage to any of the structures in the vicinity of the test site.  The 
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), for a complex of reasons, decided to bring their high 
technology to the Mississippi Piney Woods, instead of containing it at their Nevada Test 
Site near Las Vegas, or at one of their Pacific sites.   
Residents around the site experienced the anxiety of atomic testing, a fear that 
their lives could be irreparably changed should something go wrong.  For some, the 
damages were significant from the shock wave created by the first test, codenamed 
?Salmon.?  At least one home was rendered uninhabitable as the ground rolled and shook.  
For most, damages, if any, were inconsequential, and were offset by the knowledge that 
                                                 
1 Charles C. Bates, Thomas F. Gaskell, and Robert B. Rice, Geophysics in the Affairs of Man: A 
Personalized History of Exploration Geophysics and Its Allied Sciences of Seismology and Oceanography 
(New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), 204. 
 
 2 
what the AEC was doing was of national and international significance.  But as time went 
by, the appeal of the program waned, ultimately resulting in resentment.  Even today, the 
topic is delicately approached by an outside researcher.  As the author has experienced 
firsthand, people in the region are friendly and open to conversation, but when the atomic 
tests are mentioned, it seems that a ghost enters the room.  Rumors persist about what 
took place at the rural test site and the results of the atomic activities there. 
 The title of this work, ?Southern Devices: Geology, Industry, and Atomic Testing 
in Mississippi?s Piney Woods? was not arrived at by accident, for it seeks to connect 
these three seemingly disparate entities, which intersected in the Piney Woods region in 
the 1960s.  It began as a research paper written for a seminar conducted by Dr. Wayne 
Flynt on the history of the New South.  It then became a product of several years of 
research and numerous trips to Hattiesburg and Purvis, the closest cities to the test site.  
During this time, the author had the opportunity to talk casually to a wide range of 
individuals.  Most notably, there was a general sense of misunderstanding concerning 
what really happened.  Some thought that the explosions in the massive subterranean salt 
plug ? known as a ?salt dome? ? were weapons tests.  To be sure, the program had a 
military component, but it was not intended to test weaponry.  Indeed, the reason for the 
two tests was quite the opposite.  They were part of a growing effort to control the 
worldwide development of nuclear weapons, and helped devise the systems used today to 
detect the nuclear tests conducted today by nations concealing their destructive 
aspirations from public scrutiny.  But in researching the background of the atomic tests, 
this story quickly became far more complex than originally intended.  It changed from a 
 
 3 
study confined to nuclear test and test detection technology to one of geology, southern 
industry, and aspirations to bring high technology to the region. 
 There are two groups of people regarding the history of these tests: those who 
have heard about them and those who have not.  Most of those familiar with the tests 
either live in the area around the test site, have relatives who live around the test site, or 
were part of the test operations.  Those who are unfamiliar with the tests generally fall 
into one of three subgroups: those who feel that the tests somehow explain what was 
wrong with Mississippi in the 1960s, those who feel that it was a good idea, and those 
who respond, ?I had no idea.?  
What happened at the test site?  This became the ultimate question when I began 
research around 2003.  The author was ignorant of these atomic tests until viewing Peter 
Kuran?s documentary, Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero.  Kuran?s earlier 
Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie is a well-worn item in the author?s 
videotape collection, and led to the acquisition of Atomic Journeys.  It was here that the 
existence of an atomic test site in southern Mississippi first was realized.  Why had 
Mississippi been chosen for atomic tests, especially when it was widely regarded for its 
social backwardness during the 1960s?  What led to these tests being conducted?  What 
was gained from them, and why was there so little public knowledge of an atomic test 
program in the heart of the Deep South?  Finally, what were the results of these tests on 
those living around the site and had they gained or lost anything because of them?2 
The two atomic tests conducted at the Tatum Salt Dome site, codenamed 
?Dribble,? are unique because of their location: they were the only ones conducted in the 
                                                 
2 Peter Kuran, Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero, VHS (Thousand Oaks, CA: Goldhill 
Video, 1999); Peter Kuran, Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, VHS (Thousand Oaks, CA: 
Goldhill Video, 1997). 
 
 4 
continental United States east of the Mississippi River.  Few books mention them; one of 
these, Charles Bates?s Geophysics in the Affairs of Man, describes the events at the 
Tatum Salt Dome site in a page and a half.  It is one of the longest treatments of these 
two tests to be found in any work.  The most likely reason for this is that there was no 
fallout from the Mississippi tests, and no widespread damage.  Despite localized 
contamination, there were no civilian contamination incidents as noted in Howard Ball?s 
Justice Downwind, and numerous other works.  This in itself is remarkable, for 
examination of a map clearly shows the Dribble site within 150 miles of several cities 
and large towns.  No other American nuclear test site sits in such a highly populated area.  
Near the site is the Lamar county seat, Purvis, and within 35 miles is Hattiesburg.  Within 
the 150-mile radius sits the state capital, Jackson, the coastal cities of Biloxi, Gulfport, 
and Pascagoula, Slidell and New Orleans in Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama.  By 
comparison, the most densely populated area near the Nevada Test Site is Las Vegas.3 
 The Dribble tests are little mentioned, as is the region where they were conducted. 
The first chapter, ?Humble Origins,? begins with the formation of the unique geological 
factors that resulted in the subsurface features of the Gulf Coast and Piney Woods.  After 
evaporate deposition of thick layers of rock salt, which was then covered by sedimentary 
deposits, the massive salt domes rose from a deeply buried subterranean salt formation, 
or ?bed.?  Salt domes rise upward several miles due to their buoyancy, and brought with 
them large petroleum and gas deposits close to the surface where they could be exploited.  
Their history then continues into the period of human occupation and early industry in 
south-central Mississippi, a region that has received precious little attention from 
                                                 
3 Bates, Gaskell, and Rice, Geophysics in the Affairs of Man, 203-204; Howard Ball, America?s 
Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 
 
 5 
historians when compared to the cotton-rich Yazoo Delta region to its north.  It also 
introduces the Tatum family, who emigrated from Tennessee to seek their fortune in the 
rich timber land from which the Piney Woods takes its name.   
The second chapter, ?Timber, Oil, and Atoms,? spans a much shorter period of 
time than the first. This is not a tale of the Cotton South; it is a story of the Timber South; 
the Oil and Gas South.  The Tatum family expanded its timber and lumber operations in 
the Piney Woods. Southern Mississippi?s wealth had always been in timber rather than 
cotton.  The timber industry has generally been neglected by historians in favor of cotton.  
This is a serious omission, for as Gavin Wright pointed out in Old South, New South, 
between 1880 and 1920, the timber industry was the leading employer and contributor of 
value-added products to the southern economy, and lumber is a manufacturing industry.  
As he explained, its dependency on transient laborers, and its inherent transient nature 
due to the need to move facilities nearer to stands of trees, causes it to receive this 
diminished attention from historians because of a lack of cohesive identity among 
workers, unlike those working in cotton textile mills.  Timber harvesting was a labor-
intensive activity, and even though machinery was introduced near the turn of the 
twentieth century, it lost little of its hazardous nature.4   
 James Cobb charges the timber camps with widespread abuse, where timber camp 
workers were held captive by poverty and virtual imprisonment, policed by armed 
foremen.  Citing wage slavery and peonage to the company store, he notes the activities 
of Florida?s Osceola Log Company, which lured workers to their camps with promises of 
                                                 
4 Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War 
(New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1986), 159-62. 
 
 6 
reasonable wages, only to reveal later that substantial deductions were cut from their 
hourly pay for subsistence expenses such as room and board.5   
 Such charges are certainly true, but the widespread abuse does not seem to have 
been as evident in the Piney Woods of Mississippi, where the work was as hard as 
anywhere else.  Historians neglect to mention such abuses there, and in fact, some note an 
unusual sense of racial harmony.  Following the Civil War, members of Rankin 
Hickman?s log rafting crews ?ate out of the same pots, slept in close proximity around 
campfires, and joined in singing at night.  Wages were equal and skin color was of little 
significance to those of both races, who were often neighbors and longtime friends.?  
Such was the result of the close personal interaction that occurred in the region, which 
never saw widespread slavery, and was free of the cotton plantation system.  This is not 
to deny racism and segregation in the Piney Woods, for it was present there as well as 
anywhere else in the South.  But industry appears to have played a role in creating a 
regional lessening of the bitterest sentiments.  Herman Clarence Nixon also noted that 
?industrialization has sprung up chiefly in sections that were only slightly touched by the 
pre-war plantation economy,? and noted the importance of the timber and lumber 
industries that grew up ?between the cotton fields and the coast,? as well as a new source 
of southern income, petroleum.6   
 The Tatum family also pursued petroleum, beginning in the 1930s, on their 
growing landholdings.  Mississippi?s timber industry as a whole fluctuated as Wright 
                                                 
5 James C. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 1877-1984 (Lexington: University Press 
of Kentucky, 1984), 69-71. 
6 Nollie W. Hickman, ?Black Labor in Forest Industries of the Piney Woods, 1840-1933? in Noel 
Polk, ed., Mississippi?s Piney Woods: A Human Perspective  (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 
1986), 82; Herman Clarence Nixon in Twelve Southerners, I?ll Take My Stand: The South and Agrarian 
Tradition, 6th ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 192.  
 
 7 
mentioned.  The discovery of oil at the Spindletop Dome in Texas suggested a new set of 
opportunities.  As Dudley Hughes notes, small lumber companies delinquent in paying 
their taxes often sold their harvested property cheaply to larger companies, or simply 
allowed the land to be seized by the state.  Apparently worthless due to its denuded 
condition, the land held potential wealth in the form of their mineral rights, and was 
snapped up by larger timber companies.  As Hughes further explains, the Gulf Coast oil 
boom resulted in widespread prospecting, with timber companies becoming the primary 
beneficiaries of any finds.  Thus the timber industry was directly involved in bringing the 
petroleum industry into the South.  The Tatums found no oil on their property and 
continued to harvest trees and manufacture lumber.  While prospecting on their land, they 
discovered the great salt dome that bears their name, and that became the focus of later 
atomic testing activities.7 
 The oil industry brought new wealth and new expertise in drilling and excavation.  
It spurred southern universities to educate a new generation of trained geologists to look 
for the valuable substances hidden below the ground in reservoir formations and salt 
domes.  But one must be careful to point out that although these individuals began to 
receive excellent training in geology, it was of a practical nature so that valuable 
resources could be better located.  Other curricula, such as physics, lay concentrated 
outside the South.  For example, Dr. Andrew Suttle, who is noted later in this work, was a 
native Mississippian, but he received his training in nuclear chemistry at the University of 
Chicago.  Still, though overlooked by historians as the timber industry, the oil and gas 
industry in the South had far-reaching implications for the future atomic program.  
                                                 
7 Dudley J. Hughes, Oil in the Deep South: A History of the Oil Business in Mississippi, Alabama, 
and Florida, 1859-1945 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), 37-38. 
 
 8 
Certainly, industry in the Piney Woods was not limited to timber and oil, but these led 
directly to the Tatum Dome, and bear the most relevance to this study.8   
 Mississippi government officials were anxious to bring other industries into the 
state, beginning initially with the 1930s-era Balance Agriculture with Industry (BAWI) 
program, to later efforts to lure high-tech industries peripherally associated with the 
nuclear tests.   Cobb notes that BAWI faced criticism for being socialistic, because it 
called for the state government to acquire land and facilities to lure outside manufacture 
into the region to check labor out-migration.  Its successes, later amplified by the demand 
for manufactured goods caused by World War II, were deceptive because many of the 
manufacturers brought into the region were large enough in the prewar years to not need 
the program when most of the BAWI factories were established.  This meant that the 
capital spent was wasted ? if they had wanted to expand into Mississippi on their own, 
they could have done so on the strength of their own capital while exploiting the labor 
surplus in regions of the state impacted by the loss of agricultural jobs.  BAWI ?raised 
the curtain on an era of the competitive use of gifts and gimmickry to attract industry to 
the South.?9 
 James Silver berated the continuing segregation in Mississippi following World 
War II, and charged that industrial leaders failed the state in allowing the ?closed society? 
to continue.  Governor Ross Barnett, he argues, was willfully ignorant in maintaining that 
northern manufacturers favored continued segregation because they located facilities in 
Mississippi.  Citing Standard Oil?s decision to build a refinery at Pascagoula, Silver noted 
that it was not due to a northern desire for a segregated work force, but because of the 
                                                 
8 Hughes, Oil in the Deep South, 49, 112-15. 
9 James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 
1936-1990 (Chicago: The University of Illinois Press, 1993), 14-34. 
 
 9 
reliability of the work force as demonstrated in other industries of the area, local political 
diligence and leadership, and geography.  Silver blames Barnett personally for the loss of 
industries, which rethought their Mississippi plans and relocated elsewhere because of the 
riots in Oxford during the James Meredith crisis of 1962.10 
 Like the space program, the AEC program in the Piney Woods was the product of 
outsiders.  The AEC?s need for a contained underground test site wherein it could analyze 
the physical and seismic effects of a nuclear blast in a salt dome led it to the South.  
Barnett?s segregationist rhetoric did not deter Mississippi?s selection as the state where 
the tests would be sited, as two salt domes there were deemed most acceptable for the 
proposed program.  This was intentional, in part because of Barnett?s refusal to integrate.  
The AEC program was fully committed to the Tatum Salt Dome site by 1962, the year of 
the riots at Ole Miss.  Extrapolating historian Bruce Schulman?s argument concerning 
federal defense programs and the economic leverage NASA?s presence exerted in 
Huntsville, Alabama, to integrate the school system to the AEC program in Mississippi, it 
is not unreasonable to assume that it too was used to prod Barnett.  In the case of 
Huntsville, white residents turned against Governor George Wallace, fearing the loss of 
the Marshall Space Flight Center.  In Mississippi, Barnett attempted to negotiate with 
Attorney General Robert Kennedy a dramatic armed showdown between himself and 
federal marshals.  At the end of this scripted drama, Barnett would capitulate to federal 
force and step aside to admit James Meredith to the university.  This defiant last stand 
was never carried out, due to the enraged passions of pro-segregation Mississippians, and 
the threat of a gun battle where Barnett might have been shot.  Several months after the 
                                                 
10 James W. Silver, Mississippi: The Closed Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 
1963), 71-77. 
 
 10 
Ole Miss riots, another black student, Cleve McDowell, entered that institution?s law 
school with no gubernatorial interference ? indeed it appears to have been curiously 
uneventful.  Clearly, something held Barnett at bay, for it was one thing to simply admit a 
black student to the Ole Miss, it was another to allow one to be trained there in the law.  
The evidence for this may lay somewhere in Barnett?s personal papers, which have yet to 
be located.11    
 Schulman notes that quickly acquiescing to federal wishes had its benefits, which 
was evidenced by Barnett?s successor, Paul Johnson.  Known for a derogatory remark 
concerning the NAACP, and running as a segregationist successor to Barnett, he quickly 
ameliorated his tone upon his election.  Refusing to oppose integration actively as his 
predecessor had done earlier, he assumed a more quiescent attitude.  This was rewarded 
when Litton Industries built their ?Shipyard of the Future? at Pascagoula in 1967, and 
several years later, the Research and Development Center, originally envisioned by 
Barnett in 1960, opened in Jackson.12      
 Chapter three, ?The Road to Dribble,? is an overview of nuclear test monitoring, 
technological problems, and innovation.  Despite the radiological hazards presented by 
atmospheric nuclear testing, fallout from Soviet testing was a superior asset in analyzing 
their weapons development programs.  Unfortunately for those engaged in this analysis, 
the international outcry over fallout forced the nuclear superpowers to consider moving 
                                                 
11Bruce Joseph Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy and Southern Economic 
Development, 1933-1980? (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1987), 333; Stephan D. Shaffer and Dale Krane 
in Dale Krane and Stephan D. Shaffer, Mississippi Government and Politics: Modernizers Versus 
Traditionalists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 39; Erle Johnston, Mississippi?s Defiant 
Years: 1953-1973 (Forest, MS: Lake Harbor Publishers, 1990), 200.  In 2009, the author telephoned the 
Mississippi Department of Archives and History to inquire about the location of Barnett?s personal papers.  
They replied that they had no knowledge of their status or location.  It is likely that they are being held by 
the Barnett family. 
12 Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sun Belt,? 358, 360. 
 
 11 
their testing activities underground.  ?Project Dribble? was part of a larger test series, 
which was in turn part of an overarching program, called ?Project Vela.?  Vela addressed 
covert Soviet atomic tests, deemed necessary as negotiations toward the Limited Test 
Ban Treaty progressed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  This treaty, which the United 
States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union entered into in 1963, forbade nuclear testing 
in the atmosphere, in space, or underwater.  Allan Winkler notes that this treaty, and the 
negotiations leading to it, was a means to de-escalate further from the 1962 Cuban 
Missile Crisis, while eliminating the health threat from global fallout created by 
atmospheric testing.  Vela had three primary components, each to address covert testing 
through different means.  ?Vela Hotel? planned to use orbiting satellites to spot illicit 
detonations at high altitude and in space.  ?Vela Sierra? sought nuclear detonations much 
the same as Vela Hotel, but instead used ground-based stations.  Vela Uniform, of which 
Project Dribble was a part, researched seismic means to detect and monitor underground 
nuclear testing, and whether such methods could be employed to fool such detection 
systems.  Conceived during the Test Moratorium of 1958-1961, it was initially affected 
by the inability to conduct nuclear explosions, and instead relied on chemical explosive 
programs, although these could not provide the full range of data desired by the 
Department of Defense and the AEC.13 
 Chapter four, ?Cowboy and the ?Big Hole? Theory,? addresses the primary reason 
for the Dribble tests.  The big hole theory offered a means whereby a nation could cheat 
the methods devised by the Vela program through exploding nuclear devices in pre-
                                                 
13 Allan M. Winkler, Life Under A Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1993), 178-82; Harold Karan Jacobson and Eric Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and 
Politicians: The United States and the Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 
Press, 1966), 178. 
 
 12 
excavated underground chambers.  This concern was raised because of the ?Cowboy? 
series of high explosive tests previously mentioned.  Cowboy suggested that this could be 
a problem for a detection system and begged the use of atomic device test verification.  It 
also introduced a plan under the proposed ?Plowshare? program, to employ nuclear 
devices in Mississippi to excavate the proposed Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway.  
Eventually ruled too hazardous to people living nearby, the idea of nuclear earthmoving 
appealed initially to the AEC?s Nuclear Cratering Group, Governors Barnett and 
Johnson, and was championed by MITRC director Andrew Suttle.  As Scott Kirsch notes, 
this realization was fortunate due to the excessive belief that nuclear earthmoving could 
be performed safely in the midst of a populated area, despite the use of some fifty ?clean? 
nuclear charges, totaling 1.9 megatons.14     
 Chapter five, ?MITRC, MCEC, and the Tatum Decision,? focuses on the creation 
and aspirations of the Mississippi Industrial and Technological Research Committee, the 
engineering superfirm, the Mississippi Construction and Engineering Company (MCEC), 
and the final resolution of the question of the land and mineral rights owned by the Tatum 
Lumber Company.  MITRC was initiated by Barnett during his inaugural speech in 1960 
and was designed to spur interest in technologically-advanced industry and research in 
the state.  MITRC was a successor to the BAWI program, which sought to bring 
manufacturing jobs to Mississippi.  The MCEC was a privately-organized handmaiden to 
the MITRC, and sought to garner lucrative contracts from the AEC?s presence in the 
state.  Its resulting experience was a slap in the face for Mississippi?s engineering 
community. 
                                                 
14 Scott Kirsch, Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear 
Earthmoving (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 163-68. 
 
 13 
 
  
 Gavin Wright observed another area where the South failed, which connects 
directly to the aspirations of the MITRC to attract a particle accelerator to the Hattiesburg 
area following the first atomic test.  This is the failure of indigenous technological 
development, allowing what Cobb refers to as ?economic colonialism? to continue.  
Wright notes the general employment of low-skilled workers utilizing imported 
technology near the turn of the century and afterward, preventing the South from gaining 
a reputation for technological innovation.  Schulman noted that outsiders provided the 
technological acumen for high-tech industrial development in the South, and this was true 
at the Tatum Dome.15   
Was it then a case of ?atomic carpetbagging??  The term ?carpetbagger? refers to 
northern opportunists who entered the South following the Civil War to exploit the 
devastated economy for their own personal benefit.  The federal government brought the 
Dribble program to the Piney Woods, and it is a matter of debate whether anyone was 
actually exploited by it.  Local residents were inconvenienced through repeated 
evacuation, but were compensated.  Their property, when damaged, was generally 
compensated.  In addition, the government brought many other programs to the South.  
The space program, for instance, was hailed as a means to develop the South?s technical 
and technological potential.  Politicians ?envisioned NASA as the Moses that would lead 
the South to a High-tech promised land.?  Yet much of the technical know-how in 
rocketry depended on true outsiders in the form of imported German scientists.  Still, 
regional universities benefited from the technical influx from the space program.  Federal 
defense contracts supplied an ever-increasing economic resource, and were used as part 
                                                 
15 Wright, Old South, New South, 62, 79: Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt,? 228-42. 
 
 14 
of a ?carrot and stick? relationship between the national and state governments.  With the 
introduction of numerous contracts and projects after World War II, the federal 
government gained cultural leverage in areas it never previously held, such as in 
desegregation.  Overall, this relationship was simple: once a state accepted and budgeted 
federal money from a contract, it was bound to obey federal wishes, lest the contract be 
jeopardized and the funding cancelled or reallocated.  In this relationship, the federal 
government?s wishes held sway.  Thus it was less an issue of carpetbagging than a 
paternalistic relationship.16 
 Chapter six, ?Salmon Run,? addresses the final preparations for the initial nuclear 
test at the Dribble site.  Following the end of the moratorium, Vela Uniform proceeded 
with its seven atomic tests. The AEC conducted them in several locations in order to 
assess seismic signal propagation through different types of media.  Mississippi was only 
one of the extraordinary locations for these tests, as one was conducted near Fallon, 
Nevada, while the largest of the series was conducted near the end of the Aleutian Island 
chain in Alaska.  The other four were detonated at the Nevada Test Site.  They ranged in 
explosive yield, with the smallest, ?Sterling,? detonated at the Dribble site registering 
little more than a third of a kiloton of force, to the Aleutian test, ?Long Shot,? yielding 80 
kilotons.  Nearly eight years passed between the first shot of the series, ?Shoal,? in 
October, 1963, and the final one, ?Diamond Mine,? in July, 1971.  The two Dribble tests 
occurred in 1964 and 1966.17 
                                                 
16 Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt,? 228-42, 257, 332-33. 
17 Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig, Nuclear 
Weapons Databook Volume II: U. S. Nuclear Warhead Production (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing 
Company, 1987), 164-69.  
 
 15 
The Dribble program experienced numerous technical delays in conducting its 
first atomic test, ?Salmon? at the salt dome site.  During this period, it was most active 
with the public, providing frequent briefings, and a notable meeting at the Baxterville 
School.  It was during this time that the Salmon test set an unenviable record: it was the 
most delayed atomic test ever conducted.  The capricious nature of southeastern weather 
manifested itself beyond the expectations of anyone at the test site.  Weather delays were 
preceded by engineering problems unique to the test site.  In the end, a change in test 
procedures allowed the test to proceed. 
 Chapter seven, ?Shoot That Damn Thing,? is concerned with the effects and 
aftermath of the Salmon test.  It also addresses the failed attempt by Hattiesburg to attract 
a particle accelerator research facility to the region, despite the best efforts of MITRC 
and local politicians.  As Schulman pointed out, the ability for federal decision makers to 
choose where programs were allocated was well-known, although it was a bitter pill for 
Hattiesburg to swallow, especially in light of its previously demonstrated willingness to 
work with the AEC.  But hope for Hattiesburg?s future association with the AEC 
remained alive with the second test planned for the Dribble site, the more scientifically 
relevant test shot called ?Sterling.?18 
 Chapter eight, ?A Silver Lining and a Miracle Play? addresses the Sterling atomic 
test and the subsequent use of the Salmon chamber for gas explosion tests.  The Sterling 
explosion, conducted in December 1966, was the most scientifically important of the two 
atomic blasts at the Dribble site, for it explored the decoupling effect.  Following 
Sterling, the AEC planned three methane/oxygen detonations for the chamber, of which 
two were carried out.  Before the final test was executed, the AEC decided to end its 
                                                 
18 Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt,? 272. 
 
 16 
activities at the Tatum Dome, remediate the land, and return it to its previous owners.  
The salt dome changed status from test site to nuclear waste repository, as contaminated 
earth and liquids were permanently entombed in the Salmon chamber.  
 Chapter nine, titled ?Nuclear Waste,? concerns further site remediation efforts and 
Dribble?s role in the debate over nuclear waste storage in Mississippi?s salt domes.  
Following the active test period and cleanup activities, biological sampling in 1979 
indicated that the waste contained deep inside the salt dome was leaking.  Compounded 
by laboratory errors, this led to a full evacuation of the area around the dome.  This 
occurred while the Three Mile Island atomic power plant threatened Pennsylvania with a 
nightmare scenario of widespread radioactive contamination, and while the Department 
of Energy was looking again at Mississippi?s salt domes as possible sites for nuclear 
waste repositories.  Dribble was important to research, and its results led directly to the 
Threshold Test Ban Treaty, whereby no underground test could exceed 150 kilotons.  
Dribble?s decoupling experiment allowed scientists to discern between coupled and 
decoupled shots, and in doing so provided a technical means to verify tests ? the 
program?s intended purpose.  In order to thoroughly clean up the site, the Department of 
Energy bought the site from the Tatum family, and retains it to this day.     
 The events that took place in Mississippi?s Piney Woods were greatly affected by 
geological and environmental forces, and human politics.  Water and wind conspired to 
frustrate and delay one test at the Dribble site, and lightning served to accelerate another.  
Although the tests are interesting in themselves, what stands out are several threads that 
run through the entire work: the rise of local industry and its change as exemplified by 
the Tatum family, the trajectory of international events as they led to the Tatum Dome, 
 
 17 
the effort to bring nuclear technology fully into the Hattiesburg area much like NASA 
brought space technology to Huntsville, and the public sentiment of those living around 
the test site, who began their experience with the AEC with high hopes and some 
trepidation, and that later turned to resentment and fear that their very lives were 
threatened by the activities at the Dribble site.  Finally, there is the land itself, that is 
currently being allowed to revert back to its pre-human activity condition.  It deserves its 
rest.      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
Chapter One 
 
Humble Origins 
                                                            
 On October 22, 1964, the earth shook near the small town of Baxterville, a hamlet 
of about 150 people located in rural Lamar County in south-central Mississippi.  The 
ground motion, though it was stronger than expected, was not a surprise.  It had been 
caused by the long-planned and well-publicized detonation of a nuclear test device.  
There was no brilliant flash, nor was there a mushroom cloud rising dramatically over the 
rolling countryside and thick pine groves.  The only thing out of the ordinary was the 
ground motion, which radiated out from the deep underground detonation point and 
caused dust to rise over the test site, throwing one man?s refrigerator contents onto his 
kitchen floor, cracking numerous foundations, and rattling windows as far as Hattiesburg, 
some thirty miles away. 
 The atomic detonation in the verdant pine belt of south-central Mississippi was no 
random act designed to subdue the violent passions of Mississippi embroiled in the civil 
rights movement, nor was it the seemingly ubiquitous southern male tendency to blow 
something up just for the hell of it.  The test, codenamed ?Salmon? was a precisely 
planned and metered nuclear test conducted under unique surroundings and 
circumstances.  The Salmon device yielded 5.3 kilotons of explosive force, which is 
roughly one-third that released by the bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima near the 
end of World War II.  The test was conducted at a depth of about 2,700 feet below the 
surrounding countryside, and was fully contained and monitored.  Basically, Salmon was 
an unusually large outdoor laboratory experiment.  
 
 19 
 Salmon, and a subsequent atomic detonation codenamed ?Sterling,? were the only 
two nuclear tests to be conducted in the continental United States east of the Mississippi 
River.  Their purpose was to ascertain whether or not the United States and its allies 
would be able to enter into subsequent treaties placing controls on nuclear tests following 
the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which forbade atmospheric, undersea, and space tests 
with nuclear devices.  With the growing desire to limit the size of nuclear weapons, it 
became clear that restricting test yields would be an important step ? but underground 
testing presented unique limitations to verifying these yields.  Seismology, a field rapidly 
gaining importance in disarmament efforts, would play a major role in test monitoring, 
yet its incorporation into a system of monitoring and observation raised questions.  How 
did one distinguish an atomic test from an earthquake?  What about the explosive 
eruption of volcanoes or other natural phenomena?  How small a test could be detected?  
Even more to the point, could tests be intentionally hidden in an effort to evade treaty 
stipulations? 
 These questions were the focus of the ?Vela Uniform? program, a series of seven 
nuclear detonations that were spread across several test programs.  They were conducted 
in several locations: the Mississippi test site, which was known as ?Dribble,? Fallon, 
Nevada, the Nevada Test Site, and Amchitka, Alaska, where the largest of the seven, an 
eighty-kiloton underground shot, was fired.  Vela was intended also to answer the 
question of the effects of different soil and rock types and their effects on seismic signals.  
The various locations allowed for tests to be conducted in several different test 
environments. 
 
 20 
Geologically, Mississippi had a unique role in this program.  The choice of test 
site in that state was not accidental.  In fact, the test location was many millions of years 
in the making.  It was a remarkable geological structure that allowed not only for a fully 
enclosed and sealed shot location, but also presented an opportunity for assessing theories 
relating to the concealment of nuclear tests.  This geological structure is a mammoth 
column of solid rock salt, some seven to eight miles in height, and well over a mile in 
circumference at its top, which is poised 1,500 feet below the earth?s surface.  Because of 
this enormous salt pillar Mississippi was chosen as a site for underground nuclear tests.  
The pillar, or salt dome, that was host to the atomic tests was large but not uniquely so.  
These enormous salt domes along and under the Gulf Coast and inland for several 
hundred miles were extruded upward from a thick subterranean salt formation known as 
the Louann Salt.   This geologic formation formed during the Jurassic Period, and was up 
to 10,000 feet thick in some places.  The Louann Salt, which is one of the basal 
formations within the northern Gulf Basin, ran (or ?trended?) in a large arc, starting in 
eastern Texas, with its northwestern maximum extent located just southeast of 
Shreveport, Louisiana.  Then, it extended due east and north into Arkansas, where it 
joined another large salt formation located along the eastern half of the border between 
Louisiana and Arkansas.  The Louann then spread into central Mississippi and curved 
southeast toward Mobile Bay.  Interestingly, there was a salt-free zone between the 
Louann and another salt-bearing basin to its south, known as the Coastal Basin, which ran 
along the coast westward from southeastern Louisiana to the region of Galveston, Texas, 
where it then stretched north almost to the Oklahoma border.1   
                                                 
1 Donald H. Kupfer, ?Mechanism of Intrusion of Gulf Coast Salt,? Proceedings of the Symposium 
on the Geology and Technology of Gulf Coast Salt: May 1-2, 1967 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 
 
 21 
The origin of this bed likely lay within the formation of the Gulf of Mexico ? 
itself created when the supercontinent of Pangaea fragmented and the North American, 
South American, and African tectonic plates split apart.  What became the Gulf started as 
a shallow body of salt water.  Repeated evaporative cycles allowed thick layers of salt to 
be deposited at its bottom.  As the Gulf expanded through tectonic motion, the bulk of 
this deposited salt slid northward with the North American plate, as the Pacific plate 
pressed eastward.  The Gulf basin enlarged and became a trap for alluvial and marine 
sedimentary deposits formed during the Cenozoic Era.  These Cenozoic sediments buried 
the salt.  Fluctuating global sea levels contributed to further salt deposition as rising and 
subsiding sea levels formed large shallow inland bodies of salt water that evaporated over 
time and allowed for various layers of salt to be laid down.2   
Rock salt is a remarkable material.  At the surface at room temperature, it is a 
hard crystalline substance like the table salt that is familiar to everyone.  When it is 
subjected to intense pressure and heat, about 300 degrees C, as it is several miles below 
the surface, it behaves as a plastic material.  Lighter in density than the surrounding and 
overlying sedimentary deposits, rock salt tends to rise under pressure, following fractures 
in the overlying strata.  As long as the salt remains connected to the hot mother bed, it 
will continue to force its way upward hydraulically due to the geostatic pressure caused 
by the overlying burden.  This process of deep subterranean plastic material rising 
through overlying material to shallower levels is known as ?diapirism,? and although 
similar to volcanism, it is defined by Gerald O?Brien as referring to low-temperature 
                                                                                                                                                 
University Press, 1970), 25, 30. 
2 Jack L. Walper, ?Tectonic Evolution of the Gulf of Mexico,? in Rex H. Pilger, ed., The Origin of 
the Gulf of Mexico and the Early Opening of the Central North Atlantic Ocean: Proceedings of a 
Symposium at Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana March 3-4-5, 1980  (Baton Rouge: 
Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 87. 
 
 22 
piercement of strata by sedimentary materials.  These diapiric structures tend to remain 
buried, although in some instances, they do reach and exceed the surface level.  The 
Darbast salt plug in Iran, for example, rises some 2,000 feet above the surrounding valley 
floor.  Some of these salt mountains in Iran are enormous, being up to 1? miles wide and 
2-3 miles long and survive due to the dry climate.  In his book, Salt, Mark Kurlansky 
discusses the growth and importance of the salt industry in Germany and Eastern Europe, 
which are other areas where salt diapirism was especially active. 3   
The origin of the Louann salt deposits and associated organic sediments was sea 
water.  As is the case today, the seas of the Jurassic were full of life.  Dead sea creatures, 
primarily microscopic organisms, fell to the bottom of these shallow waterways and were 
buried in prodigious quantities.  The deep briny sea bottom provided an anoxic 
environment that partially preserved this organic material from decay.  Specialized 
bacteria survived the alkaline and anoxic conditions, and slowly digested these enormous 
masses of biological material.  This digesting mass was then buried with the salt to great 
depths.  With the diapiric movement of the salt came the remnants of this ancient oceanic 
life.   
In cross section, salt diapirs generally have a mushroom shape.  This is because of 
a process that occurred while the salt progressed towards the surface, whereby the salt 
column generated an important feature known as a ?caprock.?  The caprock generally 
isolated the salt from the overlying strata and was at the same time pressed upwards 
                                                 
3 William Carruthers Gussow, ?Salt Diapirism: Importance of Temperature, and Energy Source of 
Emplacement,? in Jules Braunstein and Gerald D. O?Brien, eds., Diapirs and Diapirism:  A Symposium, 
Including Papers Presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 
26-29, 1965, and Some Others. (Tulsa: The American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1968), 21, 42-
44; Gerald O?Brien, ?Survey of Diapirs and Diapirism,? in Braunstein and O?Brien eds., Diapirs and 
Diapirism, 1-2; Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (New York: Walker and Company, 2002). 
 
 23 
against the overburden with immense force.  If one imagines a salt diapir as an active 
fluid convective column, with most of the convective activity occurring near the center, 
then it is easier to understand the process of caprock formation.  The caprock was formed 
from the detritus left over from bacterial digestive processes and the insoluble residue 
from rock salt dissolution.  Caprock is comprised of a calciferous material known as 
?anhydrite,? as well as gypsum, sulfur, and some metallic deposits.  Salt continually 
moved from great depths to the top of the salt column, where the caprock occurs, forming 
an ever thickening layer.4   
Caprock was important as it increased the area over which the upthrusting salt 
diapir pressed against the upper layers of earth.  Ground layers were faulted and 
displaced by the growth of the caprock and the upward progress of the diapir.  If an 
aquifer were encountered that eroded the diapir and undercut the caprock, the resulting 
subsidence could also leave visible surface effects as it subsided.  In short, the salt dome 
and its caprock affected the topography of a region, even when the caprock checked the 
progress of the salt diapir far below the surface.  Rolling hills, valleys and other features 
that occurred along the north and northwestern Gulf of Mexico were sure signs of the 
presence of recent or active salt diapirism. 
Caprock was not the only material transported or created by salt diapirs.  The 
bacterial digestion of organic matter in an anoxic environment produced a material called 
kerogen.  The hydrogen content in the kerogen determined whether it became oil or gas; 
hydrogen-rich marine kerogen more likely became crude oil, whereas kerogen from non-
                                                 
4 Roger Sassen, ?Organic Geochemistry of Salt Dome Cap Rocks, Gulf Coast Salt Basin,? in Ian 
Lerch and J. J. O?Brien, eds., Dynamical Geology of Salt and Related Structures (Orlando, Florida: 
Academic Press, Inc., 1987), 631-32. 
 
 24 
marine sources tended to become gas.5  These light materials were transported from the 
depths to pockets or reservoirs caused by upthrust or downthrust faulting; the disjointed 
strata acted as traps to hold the material.  Salt domes played a crucial role in the 
development of oil and gas, for not only did they create faults that trapped and 
accumulated hydrocarbons, they also provided a crucial element for petrochemical 
formation: heat.  As the hydrocarbons rose near a salt diapir, they were exposed to a 
?radiator effect? from the heat that was effectively conveyed from the mother salt bed up 
through the diapir.  This heat helped to ?cook? the petroleum and preserved it from 
further bacterial action and decay.6  This effect would later make salt domes highly 
sought after for their petroleum reserves. 
Periodically, a salt dome encountered an aquifer, where the water quickly eroded 
the salt, and occasionally the brine reached the surface as a spring.  Salt is critically 
important to animal life: such salt springs attracted game animals and other wildlife.  The 
salt and the ready availability of game in turn attracted humans to these hidden salt 
formations.  Native Americans were more than aware of these precious brine springs in 
the inner Gulf Coast region, and they certainly knew that the salt attracted animal life.7 
Europeans were slower to realize the bounty of these resources as they first explored 
inland from the Gulf.  One biographer of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto noted that 
as he and his party trekked northwestward from the Alabama settlement of Mauvilia 
towards Tuscaloosa and then westward to the Mississippi River, they not only were 
                                                 
5 Ibid., 638. 
6 Douglas F. Williams and Ian Lerche, ?Salt Domes, Organic-Rich Source Beds and Reservoirs in 
Intraslope Basins of the Gulf Coast Region,? in  Lerch and O?Brien, eds., Dynamical Geology of Salt and 
Related Structures, 751-52, 771. 
7  Kupfer, ?Mechanism of Intrusion of Gulf Coast Salt,? The Geology and Technology of Gulf 
Coast Salt, 27. 
 
 25 
suffering from starvation, but they also suffered from salt deficiency.8  De Soto?s path 
roughly paralleled the outer reaches of the Louann bed; had his path been fifty to a 
hundred miles southward, at least one of his shortages might have been accommodated. 
What De Soto missed was a region that has been known for some time as the 
?Piney Woods,? or the Pine Belt of Mississippi.  Underlain by numerous salt domes and 
the massive Louann Salt, this region today features a generally thin layer of soil that 
covers layer upon layer of clay and sand.  The area is generally wet, with occasional 
swamps and streams.  The major watercourse in the region, the Pearl River, flows 
southward to the Gulf of Mexico, and numerous smaller tributaries feed it as it gently 
runs to where Louisiana and Mississippi currently meet.  The watershed, which covers 
the southern area of Mississippi, is heavily forested today; when the first humans reached 
the area it was densely covered with tall, longleaf yellow pine trees and various 
deciduous species.  The proximity to the Gulf provided ample annual rainfall despite the 
occasional drought, and a mild climate, with the occasional hurricane cutting through the 
area.  Winters were mild, with the occasional freeze, but the cold never lasted for an 
extended period of time.  Summers were hot and humid, but as any visitor to the region 
knows, once in the forest or the surrounding swamps, the shade of the trees and the 
mysterious breezes that seem to come from nowhere cool the air and make it far more 
comfortable than areas closer to the coast.  When the daytime heat and humidity reached 
a certain level, thunderstorms appeared from the thickened air, providing torrential 
downpours and vivid lightning.  These storms also pushed inland with the sea breeze; a 
                                                 
8 Miguel Albornoz, Hernando De Soto: Knight of the Americas, Translated from the Spanish by 
Bruce Boeglin  (New York: Franklin Watts, 1986), 321. 
 
 26 
daily exhalation of cooler humid air from the Gulf that moved northward over the rapidly 
heating land resulted in towering storms that regularly soaked the land.        
As it happened, De Soto did not travel through southeastern Mississippi, entering 
the state west of present-day Cuba, Alabama, although some of his escaped swine and 
cattle apparently did.  They added to the game the Native Americans hunted in the fire-
cleared forests.  These peoples lived throughout the Piney Woods, subsisting on the land 
and its wildlife until the incursion of European settlers and traders in the eighteenth 
century.  These newcomers, primarily French and Spanish colonists venturing from the 
larger settlements of Mobile and New Orleans, came northward to investigate the 
possibilities of rich lands farther inland.  Southern coureurs de bois engaged the local 
Native Americans in the lucrative deerskin trade.  The subsequent rapid decline of the 
native deer population and the extinction of the eastern bison were coupled with the ever-
growing numbers of herd animals ? primarily horses and cattle.  Settlers also brought 
hogs into the area.  These animals were allowed to roam the woodlands and were 
periodically rounded up and sold. 9  
The southernmost extent of the Piney Woods experienced the quick succession of 
national ownership that began in 1763, when the British claimed the territory from the 
French and named it West Florida; it was then ceded to the Spanish at the end of the 
American Revolution, and was finally made part of the United States after the War of 
1812.  In 1820, the Treaty of Doak?s Stand surrendered five and a half million acres of 
Choctaw land in central and western Mississippi and effectively cleared the inland 
                                                 
9 John H. Napier III, ?Piney Woods Past: A Pastoral Elegy,? in Noel Polk, ed., Mississippi?s Piney 
Woods: A Human Perspective (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 12-13.  Coureurs de bois, 
or ?travelers in the woods? refers to European backwoodsmen, and more commonly refers to fur trappers 
and traders in the northeast. 
 
 27 
regions for settlement by Americans.  Although the bottom lands, watered and nourished 
by the alluvial deposits from the Pearl River, were highly valued for their fertility and 
ability to support cotton, many people remained within the Piney Woods, preferring a 
pastoral lifestyle within this pocket of frontier.  This decision was likely due to the lower 
prevalence of diseases that were endemic in the lower regions, such as yellow fever and 
malaria.  It was common in other locations, primarily on the Atlantic coast in places like 
Georgia and the Carolinas, for the wealthy to migrate annually to higher elevations to 
avoid these poorly understood maladies.10 
In 1862, Harper?s New Monthly Magazine published an account by J.F.H. 
Claiborne of his recent travels through the Pearl River watershed and into the Piney 
Woods.  His priceless account of the land and its people provides one of the few 
descriptive passages from the period:  
 
Along the Gulf of Mexico, or what the United States Coast Survey styles 
the Mississippi Sound, extending across the State of Mississippi, with a depth in 
the interior of about one hundred miles, there lies a region of country usually 
denominated the Pine Woods.  The soil is sandy and thin?. But it sustains a 
magnificent pine forest, capable of supplying for centuries to come the navies of 
the world.  The people are of primitive habits, and are chiefly lumbermen or 
herdsmen.  Exempt from swamps and inundation, from the vegetable 
decomposition incidental to large agricultural districts, fanned by the sea-breeze 
and perfumed by the balsamic exhalations of the pine, it is one of the healthiest 
regions in the world?. I have never seen so happy a people.  Not afflicted with 
sickness or harassed by litigation; not demoralized by vice or tormented with the 
California fever; living in a state of equality, where none are rich and none in 
want; where the soil is too thin to accumulate wealth, and yet sufficiently 
productive to reward industry; manufacturing all that they wear; producing all 
                                                 
10 Gideon Lincecum, ?Life of Apushimitaha,? in Marion Barnwell, ed., A Place Called 
Mississippi: Collected Narratives  (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 16;  Napier ?Piney 
Woods Past: A Pastoral Elegy,? in Noel Polk, ed., Mississippi?s Piney Woods, 13-14; Regarding fears and 
behavior regarding the endemic nature of malaria and yellow fever, see Joyce E. Chaplin,  An Anxious 
Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation & Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815  (Chapel Hill: University of 
North Carolina Press), 93-100. 
 
 28 
they consume; and preserving, with primitive simplicity of manners, the domestic 
virtues of their sires?. 11   
 
Claiborne described a Jeffersonian yeomanry, with minimal production of the 
crops commonly associated with large-scale slave agriculture: namely sugar cane, indigo, 
and cotton.  That which was locally grown was intended for domestic use.  The thin, 
sandy soil was much different from the rich alluvium that attracted cotton planters to the 
Mississippi and Yazoo River Delta region in the northwestern part of the state, as it 
differed from the Pearl River floodplain to its south.  The terrain and the soil were 
inappropriate for the cultivation of plantation crops, as Claiborne asserted, ?the country 
through which I am journeying is sparsely settled, and is only adapted to grazing.?12  
Slavery, though not unknown, was not as prolific as it was in other areas of the state.  The 
soil did allow the growth of trees, and slaves did work in the timber industry cutting trees 
and working in sawmills, though not in the numbers that one might imagine.  Slaves 
never outnumbered whites in the Piney Woods counties, and beginning with the rise of 
timber operations in the 1840s were primarily used to fell, transport, and raft logs 
downstream to waiting lumber mills.  They were also used in the mills for heavy manual 
tasks, although at least one operation employed its slaves in the manufacture of circular 
saws and steam engines.  The 1850 and 1860 censuses show that the majority of the 
                                                 
11 J. F. H. Claiborne, ?Rough Riding Down South,? in Marion Barnwell, ed., A Place Called 
Mississippi, 86-87.  ?California fever? refers to the frantic rush westward to the gold strikes first reported in 
1849 at Sutter?s Mill in California.  The mad scramble for wealth benefited some, but for most it was a 
disappointment and resulted in overnight boom towns, saloons, and bordellos where the vices catering to 
wayward prospectors abounded. 
12 Ibid. 
 
 29 
slaves in the region worked in ?forest industries? and brick-making, with the forest 
industry standing at 200 slaves in 1850, and 400 in 1860.13 
Along with the slaves, lower-class and landless whites provided manual labor.  
Despite the limited number of historical works directly addressing the Piney Woods 
region, there are studies of poor whites in northeastern Mississippi, including examples of 
illicit interactions and trade between slaves and poor whites.  Evolving from the ?triracial 
trade? among poor whites, Native Americans, and African slaves, the removal of the 
Native Americans from the state did little to stop this interaction.  After all, the two races 
commonly worked together performing manual labor and other unsavory tasks.  Their 
existence in close proximity would have interesting consequences later once the nation?s 
question of the future of slavery was solved.14 
The Piney Woods saw no great battles during the Civil War, nor did large armies 
march across the region despoiling all in their path.  It was practically forgotten, save for 
the number of volunteers who enlisted in the Confederate cause.  One wonders why these 
people of the lingering frontier went to fight.  The historian John Napier offers two 
plausible answers: one, the white yeomen and poor whites feared economic competition 
and loss of their social status to emancipated slaves.  Second, the Yankees represented 
modernity and outside change ? something that the locals were happy to do without 
People of the Piney Woods preferred to determine their own course of existence, and to 
be left alone.15 
                                                 
13 Nollie W. Hickman, ?Black Labor in Forest Industries of the Piney Woods, 1840-1933? in Polk, 
ed., Mississippi?s Piney Woods, 79-80. 
14 Charles C. Bolton, Poor Whites of the Antebellum South: Tenants and Laborers in Central 
North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi  (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 44, 107-108. 
15 Napier, ?Piney Woods Past: A Pastoral Elegy,? in Polk, ed., Mississippi?s Piney Woods, 20.   
 
 30 
Black and white workers commonly toiled together in the Piney Woods during 
and after Reconstruction, as the Southern timber industry grew quickly with the demand 
for lumber to repair the ravages of the war and to supply the requirements of the great 
migration westward to the Pacific Coast.  Members of Rankin Hickman?s log-rafting 
crews ?ate out of the same pots, slept in close proximity around campfires, and joined in 
singing at night.  Wages were equal and skin color was of little significance to those of 
both races, who were often neighbors and longtime friends.?16   Later though, in the 
1880s, additional trouble arose as union organizers came to the Gulf Coast and its lumber 
mills to gather support among the work force.  The Noble Knights of Labor (KoL) 
arrived to address working conditions in and around the sawmills along the Gulf Coast 
and won concessions on issues such as twelve-hour workdays and higher wages; but by 
1900 the KoL?s presence disappeared along the Mississippi Gulf Coast as its role was 
progressively overtaken by the American Federation of Labor.  Unionization attempts 
occasionally occurred, and owners of forest industries within the Piney Woods became 
adept at using race as a means to discourage them. Although the timber industry still 
remained highly lucrative until the early twentieth century, competition for menial labor 
in the forest forced the races apart.17 
In 1954, William Faulkner wrote an article for Holiday magazine, describing the 
changes that Mississippi had experienced over time.  Regarding the woodlands of the 
state, he lamented that some time after the 1870s railroad lines had opened the interior of 
the state, allowing sinister forces entry: 
 
                                                 
16 Hickman, ?Black Labor in Forest Industries of the Piney Woods, 1840-1933,? in Polk, ed., 
Mississippi?s Piney Woods, 81-82. 
17 Ibid., 82-83. 
 
 31 
(A)ll the way from Chicago and the Northern cities where the cash, the 
money was? .the rich Northerners could come down in comfort and open the land 
indeed: setting up with their Yankee dollars the vast lumbering plants and mills in 
the southern pine section, the little towns which had been hamlets without change 
or alteration for fifty years, booming and soaring into cities overnight above the 
stump-pocked barrens which should remain until in simple economic desperation 
people taught themselves to farm pine trees as in other sections they had already 
learned to farm corn and cotton.18  
 
Faulkner?s outrage at this influx of ?Yankee dollars? and wasteful forestry 
practices overlooks an important point: before the intrusion of northern business into the 
Piney Woods, there was a surge of Upper-South capital and entrepreneurs, who had 
established themselves by the 1890s.  One wealthy and ambitious Tennessean, Willie 
Sion Franklin Tatum, made his lasting mark on the Piney Woods.  Born three years 
before the outbreak of the Civil War, Tatum and his family entered the mercantile 
business in Bethel Springs, Tennessee, when he was fifteen years old, and by 1881, 
despite his long moustache and beard (which his fianc?e barely tolerated, and would later 
become his trademark) he had married and was operating the family business as ?W.S.F. 
Tatum & Company.?  This changed in 1882, when his brother-in-law entered into 
partnership with him, and the business became known as ?Tatum-O?Neal & Company.?  
Among the machinery and goods that Tatum dealt in was pine lumber.19    
Tatum developed a reputation for business acumen, intelligence, and diligence as 
a business operator.  The lure of moving southward to investigate the potential of the 
longleaf pine timber industry in the Piney Woods of Mississippi drove him to travel there 
in 1891.  Finding a promising tract in Forrest County located near Hattiesburg and 
                                                 
18 William Faulkner, ?Mississippi,? in Barnwell, ed., A Place Called Mississippi, 103, 110. 
19 Gilbert H. Hoffman, Steam Whistles in the Piney Woods: A History of the Sawmills and Logging 
Railroads of Forrest and Lamar Counties, Mississippi, Volume I ? The Newman and Tatum Lumber 
Companies and the Mills at Lumberton  (Hattiesburg, MS: Longleaf Press, 1998), 106-108. 
 
 32 
bordering a railway line, he bought the timber rights for 2,200 acres from a Michigan 
timber speculator for $27,125.  A $9,000 down payment with a contract to satisfy the 
balance in two years was agreed upon, and in 1893, the Tatum family permanently 
moved to the small town of Hattiesburg, which had but some 700 residents.  Before the 
Tatums had reached their new home, temporary milling equipment had been shipped to 
begin production of lumber for the new 160-acre lumber mill, to be sited at a location 
known as Bon Homme, some three miles south of Hattiesburg.  Bon Homme was also on 
the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, critical for transporting the lumber.20  
Tatum?s dreams tied to the dense forests of longleaf yellow pine.  He had no 
knowledge that his enterprise existed over the Louann salt bed, nor had he any notion that 
the rolling terrain that he would operate in was a direct consequence of salt domes 
welling up from deep below his feet.  His primary concern was reaching the dense stands 
of old-growth forest, cutting trees, and moving them to the mill at Bon Homme.  In doing 
this, he became notable for his energy and creativity in putting together one of the 
longest-lived timber operations in the Piney Woods.  He could never envision the role 
that his land would play in local, state, national, or international politics, nor that it would 
become a critical laboratory of Cold War science.  Beneath his feet, the product of 
millions of years of geologic change waited for discovery. 
 
 
                                                 
20 Gilbert H. Hoffman, Steam Whistles in the Piney Woods, 108-109; Joe F. Tatum, W.S.F. Tatum: 
THIS IS A LIMITED BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF A MAN WHO WAS BORN IN TENNESSEE AND 
MIGRATED TO MISSISSIPPI.  HE WAS KNOWN BY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING NAMES: WILLIE 
SION FRANKLIN TATUM, WILL SION FRANKLIN TATUM, WILLIAM SAMUEL FRANKLIN TATUM, 
W.S.F. TATUM. Presented at the 235th meeting of the Ciceronean Circle at the home of Laurence H. and 
Kathleen Polk Mc Duff in Hattiesburg, Mississippi on May 29, 1991 AM91-47, Tatum Family Collection, 
McCain Archives, University of Southern Mississippi (hereafter referred to as MCAUSM).  
 
 33 
Chapter Two 
Timber, Oil, and Atoms 
 
 Industry drove the Piney Woods unlike any other region of Mississippi.  Aided by 
the area?s geology, several developed in succession and in parallel.  Timber, 
transportation, and later, the oil and gas industries developed in the region, unlike the rest 
of the state.  Despite the overwhelming segregationist sentiments in the state, the Piney 
Woods appears to have suffered less due to violence, which may attest to the nature of 
those who lived there.  The land yielded its trees, and to the spirited, industrious, and 
wise, their gift was prolonged through extended harvesting.  Later, the hidden salt domes 
offered the promise of vast wealth.  By 1960, a geological formation that initially 
appeared worthless, gained an importance that surpassed the borders of Mississippi, and 
the United States itself. 
Following Reconstruction, the timber industry began to increase in the Piney 
Woods region.  Northern investors and timber speculators bought large woodland tracts 
and looked forward to leasing logging rights to lumber companies.  The family of 
William Sion Franklin Tatum took advantage of this opportunity to carve a business 
empire out of the pine forests of Forrest and Lamar counties, while at the same time 
playing an increasing role in the development of the town (and later city) of Hattiesburg.   
 When the Tatum family stepped off the train from Bethel Springs, Tennessee, at 
4:00 A.M. on January 5, 1893, they knew there were trying times ahead.  Hattiesburg was 
a small town, nurtured by the railroads and the growing demand for timber.  Family and 
friends were far away.  W.S.F. (?Willie?) Tatum, his wife Rebecca, and their son West, 
 
 34 
who was less than a year old, moved into a motel on Main Street.  Willie Tatum?s 
planning had been thorough in other respects, as even before he and his family had 
moved to Hattiesburg, the machinery needed at his Bon Homme mill site was delivered.  
Less than a week after the Tatums felt the predawn chill of that Mississippi winter 
morning, his workers finished the first house for mill employees.  In all, twenty-two were 
constructed, as well as more commodious homes for Tatum?s brother-in-law and partner 
M. Frank O?Neal, and for George W. Haynes, who supervised the operation of the 
temporary mills that manufactured the lumber to build the permanent mill.  Willie 
Tatum?s younger brother, Barca L. Tatum, also moved down from Tennessee to work at 
the new mill operation.  By the middle of January, they had begun grading the roadbed 
for a spur line from the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, and two weeks later, 
they broke ground for the mill itself.  By the end of June, the first load of rough timber 
had left the mill.1 
 Tatum designed his milling operation from the outset to utilize steam-powered 
machinery as much as possible.  Several things made the Tatum ? O?Neal lumber 
operation particularly noteworthy.  Tatum understood the importance of railroads in 
getting his lumber to market, and he to access and extract timber from his forests.  In its 
early form, logging in the Piney Woods relied on human and animal power to cut and 
move logs to streams and rivers to be rafted to mills.  Loggers left substantial stands of 
trees uncut because they were too difficult to remove, or were not close enough to 
waterways that could move them.  Rails could be laid into areas where no water was 
available, allowing men and animals, or steam winches and cranes, to lift the freshly cut 
trees onto logging cars for the trip to the mill.  Tatum determined to avoid the waste of 
                                                 
1 Hoffman, Steam Whistles in the Piney Woods, 108-109. 
 
 35 
careless logging; he was not the forest industry operator of whom Faulkner wrote in 
1954.  Tatum knew that his wealth lay in trees and that only a fool would rip them out 
faster than they could be replenished.2 
 Bon Homme gave way to ?Bonhomie? in 1893, a name that may have been given 
as a gesture of regard from transient workers who were happy for the employment Tatum 
provided them, although a biographical sketch implies that the site was already so titled.  
Still, despite an economic downturn, Tatum?s operation seems to have been designed to 
attend to the well being of his workers.  Indicative of his nineteenth-century industrial 
paternalistic sentiments, a one-room schoolhouse was built near the mill in 1896 to save 
the children of mill workers from having to travel to Hattiesburg.  The mill also featured 
a company store, stables, and a post office.3 
 Two years after Tatum?s logging railroad operation began in November 1894 the 
mill boasted about two miles of standard-gauge rail.  About the same time, he constructed 
a planing mill on the site for the production of finished boards rather than rough-cut 
timbers, and a large drying kiln was begun in January 1895.  In mid-February, the first 
three logging cars arrived at the mill, and by the end of September 1896, the mill?s first 
locomotive - a small four-wheel saddle-tank engine later named ?Old Puss? ? made its 
debut, and began a working career that lasted more than a generation.  Despite the young 
entrepreneur?s eagerness to branch out into finished lumber and his use of powered 
machinery to manufacture it, financially the operation ran on a shoestring.  The company 
quickly cleared out the land it was allotted in the initial contract with J. Henry Moores, a 
renowned timber speculator from Lansing, Michigan, from whom the timber rights were 
                                                 
2 Ibid,, 114-16, 125. 
3 Ibid., 109; Joe F. Tatum, W.S.F. Tatum, AM91-47, Tatum Family Collection, MCAUSM. 
 
 36 
leased.  As Tatum paid off percentages of the lease, additional tracts opened to logging, 
presumably to make sure the lumber would not be cleared from the entire 2,200 acres 
before the he paid Moores.  The problem was an issue of increasing debt and diminishing 
timber.  Despite a deal with Moores that kept the operation going, Tatum and O?Neal 
continued to struggle, and went as far as to borrow $5,000 from a Hattiesburg mercantile 
firm owner in 1895 to secure turpentine rights on some of the Moores land.  Still, not 
until the end of 1897 did both the economy and the timber industry begin to improve, and 
Tatum pursued whatever extra logging rights he could secure on the lands around his mill 
complex.4 
 O?Neal left the firm in 1898, tiring of Mississippi and yearning to leave for 
Arkansas.  Unable to buy out his interest in cash, Tatum promised him payment in three 
$5,500 installments, as well as the store in Bethel Springs.  The business, renamed the 
?Tatum Lumber Company,? surged on the upturn of the market, allowing Tatum a luxury 
that he had not had before: he began buying timber land rather than logging rights.  
Tatum bought 3,848 acres of land between 1897 and 1901, adding to his logging rights 
on the Moores tract.  Interestingly, he bought the last block of 1,924 acres from another 
lumber speculator named McPherson, who like Moores, lived in Michigan.  The 
increased size of his holdings, together with a flourishing economy, meant that the 
previous timber shortages were a worry of the past.  Tatum Lumber products enjoyed a 
wide distribution throughout the major cities of the Midwest during the 1890s.  At the 
turn of the twentieth century, the Tatum family, who added twin boys Will Sion and 
Frank Murry to their number in 1895, was doing well.5  
                                                 
4 Hoffman, Steam Whistles in the Piney Woods, 108-111. 
5 Ibid., 113-14. 
 
 37 
Following a three-month family trip to Europe in 1904, during which time the 
mill had been closed, Tatum acquired more timber rights and land and also continued to 
expand the amount of standard-gauge track running through the Piney Woods.  Lamar 
County was created that same year by the annexation of portions of Marion and Pearl 
River counties, and was named for the former senator, Secretary of the Interior, and 
Supreme Court Justice Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar.6    The shutdown of the 
Bonhomie mill and the thorough logging of the mature trees on the lands that Tatum 
acquired before the turn of the century meant he held too little available timber to restart 
his operation economically.  Tatum had determined earlier that simple clear-cutting was a 
waste of future profitable lumber and decided that only the trees with trunk diameters 
more than ten inches should be taken.  In 1901, he conducted an experiment, ordering his 
crews to take only the younger pine trees whose trunks were less than ten inches in 
diameter, and to harvest enough to supply the mill with enough volume for thirty days.  
His experiment left him with a $500 deficit after that period.  Larger trees contained more 
wood, and were therefore more cost-effective.  He also forbade the use of log skidders on 
his property because of their destructive effect on the thin layer of topsoil on the timber 
tracts.  With a partner, he bought nearly 14,000 acres of timberland for $325,000, known 
as the ?Okahola Tract,? as well as another tract that allowed him access to two important 
rail lines: the Gulf & Ship Island and the Mobile, Jackson, and Kansas City railroads.7                    
                                                 
6 U. S.  Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States 
Taken in the Year 1910, Volume II: Population 1910; Reports by States With Statistics for Counties, Cities 
and Other Civil Divisions, Alabama-Montana. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913), 
1031; Frank E. Smith and Audry Warren,  Mississippians All (New Orleans: Pelican Publishing House, 
1968), 59-74. 
7 Hoffman, Steam Whistles in the Piney Woods, 114-16, 125. 
 
 38 
By 1907, Tatum was again fully immersed in the timber business with a new mill 
incorporating a doubled boiler capacity in the power plant for new machinery, and 
extended his logging railroads into his new holdings.  In 1910, Tatum even incorporated 
one of his lines - the Bonhomie and Southwestern - to connect the towns of Columbia and 
Hattiesburg.  A religious man, Tatum was adamant that the line would never operate 
passenger or freight service on Sundays, except in extreme situations ?and the promotion 
of the Christian religion.?  This railroad never became a full reality and it fell several 
miles short of Columbia, although over the next several years people speculated that it 
would in fact be completed.  The Okahola tract and other timber lands bought and 
worked by the Tatum company kept the mill in continuous operation until 1914, when 
work again ceased.   Tatum?s explanation was that the timber close to his rail lines had 
already been taken and that it would not be feasible to continue laying track towards the 
remaining stands of trees.  The real reason was most likely due to a discovery that had 
been made in Texas just before he and his family moved to the Piney Woods.  Willie 
Tatum?s attention to his property had been confined above the ground to finding 
profitable stands of trees.  Now he wanted to look beneath the surface to find oil.8 
The Texas oil industry had begun in the early 1890s with accidental discoveries, 
such as in Corsicana, where drillers seeking life-sustaining water instead found oil in 
their wells.  Petroleum was a resource that was quickly finding new uses, from lighting 
and lubrication to powering newly developed internal combustion engines.  A Beaumont 
mechanic, Patillo Higgins, felt certain that a hill located on a flat plain near the town 
would yield oil and gas because of the presence of flammable gases he had encountered 
near it on Sunday school outings.  Higgins called it ?The Big Hill? while residents knew 
                                                 
8 Ibid., 116-22. 
 
 39 
it as Spindletop.  Ridiculed for his beliefs by townspeople and geologists, he eventually 
received the attention and aid of Captain Anthony Lucas.  Lucas and Higgins began 
exploratory drilling in 1899.  These first efforts failed, driving the ridiculed prospectors 
to the wildcatter firm of Guffey and Galey in Pittsburgh.   
Returning to Beaumont and Spindletop with Higgins, John Galey marked the spot 
of the next exploratory well near the gas springs that had first stirred Higgins?s 
excitement.  In late 1900, drilling began and slowly proceeded until it struck a modest 
amount of oil at 880 feet.  Resuming drilling on January 1, 1901, the crews working the 
rig were shocked nine days later when the first Texas gusher blasted sand, drill pipe, oil 
and rocks hundreds of feet into the air.  Higgins, the self-educated prospector, had been 
right after all and had been fortunate to become allied with Anthony Lucas, a successful 
mineral prospector who understood the properties of salt domes.  Spindletop was a classic 
example of a Gulf Coast salt diapir that had reached close enough to the surface that its 
caprock had thrust a domelike hill in the midst of flat terrain.9  
Even more important than the initial discovery of petroleum at Spindletop was the 
birth of understanding about the connection between salt diapirs and petroleum.  All salt 
domes did not yield oil, but oil was commonly found in the presence of salt.  Therefore it 
made sense to locate exploratory wells at salt domes.  Even with the oil glut produced by 
the Texas fields, there was still sufficient financial incentive to continue prospecting 
along the Texas Gulf Coast, and then farther east towards Louisiana.  In September 1901, 
Louisiana?s oil industry began with a well drilled near a salt dome near the town of 
Jennings.  In the spring of 1903, the first exploratory oil well in Mississippi was drilled at 
                                                 
9 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Free Press, 
1991), 82-85. 
 
 40 
Enterprise.  As the timber industry began to decline in the early part of the twentieth 
century, the increasing importance of gas and oil to industry and transportation helped 
make up for up the overall financial shortfall.  Natural gas proved abundant in the region, 
though oil initially proved elusive.  Mississippi?s first well to produce significant 
quantities of oil was completed in 1932, and was rapidly followed by others.  The 
discovery of the first salt dome in Mississippi four years later by Sun Oil Company 
geologists was a major disappointment, yielding little if any gas and no oil. 10  
Mississippi?s salt domes initially proved difficult to locate through seismic means.  
The sedimentary layers over the domes had the effect of damping seismic waves 
emanating from emplaced explosive charges as they radiated towards and reflected back 
from deep subterranean structures.  There was little else to do but select likely sites, drill 
exploratory wells, and retrieve drill-core samples to locate salt domes and likely 
sedimentary beds where petroleum concentrated.11  
Willie Tatum?s pursuit of this new industry was expensive and time-consuming.  
Yet with characteristic determination, not only did he allow outside oil exploration teams 
on his land, but he actively urged his sons to enter the oil and gas business.  In 1922, 
locals petitioned for Tatum to assume the unfilled term of Hattiesburg Mayor Thomas E. 
Batson, who had died on July 1.12  With this mandate, he assumed the office and 
remained mayor for sixteen years, leaving office in 1938.  While serving, he entered the 
natural gas supply business by fronting nearly half a million dollars to a natural gas 
enterprise, the Public Service Corporation of Hattiesburg, which sought to undercut the 
                                                 
10 Dudley J. Hughes, Oil in the Deep South: A History of the Oil Business in Mississippi, Alabama, 
and Florida, 1859-1945 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), 12, 23, 78, 103. 
11 Ibid., 175. 
12 Hoffman, Steam Whistles in the Piney Woods, 141. 
 
 41 
existing manufactured gas system that already supplied Hattiesburg.  Through 
questionable dealings including resolutions designed to thwart outside companies from 
providing the city with natural gas, Tatum secured a favorable deal for the Public Service 
Corporation.  In doing so, he faced a lawsuit charging him with conflict of interest ? the 
judge later exonerated him due to the court?s opinion that Tatum performed a public 
service because of the much lower cost of natural gas as opposed to manufactured gas.  
Following this decision in 1932, Tatum bought the assets of his manufactured gas rival, 
who quickly went bankrupt, and also bought the property of the Public Service 
Corporation, which had also fallen on hard times and had declared bankruptcy in 1934.  
Shortly thereafter, he and his sons Frank and Will founded the Willmut Gas and Oil 
Company, which got its name from the first four letters of W.S.F. Tatum?s first name and 
the last three letters of his last name in reverse.13  In addition to his trees, Tatum was now 
in the oil business. 
  Northern and central Mississippi remained primarily agricultural regions while 
industry developed in southern portions of the state and along its Gulf Coast.  
Depression-era economic hardships led Mississippi?s government to propose and endorse 
a larger program of industrialization for the state, known as the ?Balance Agriculture 
With Industry,? or BAWI, program in 1935.  Credited to Democratic Governor Hugh L. 
White, a former lumberman, the program subsidized twelve new industrial operations in 
the state to shore up civic economies solely dependent on agricultural and timber 
production.  Hattiesburg attracted a plant for the manufacture of silk hosiery, which 
changed to shirt manufacture during World War II.  BAWI?s other major effect in the 
region was the development of Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, which continues to be 
                                                 
13 Hughes, Oil in the Deep South, 93-95. 
 
 42 
one of the largest shipbuilders in the country.  Smarter lumbering practices forestalled, 
the collapse of the timber industry, and it remained a staple of the local economy for 
some time after the war. BAWI was important to the state at the time, but its relevance to 
the story at hand is that it presaged later developments.  Mississippi was eager to attract 
as much industry as it could, as later programs ably demonstrated.  BAWI was primarily 
intended for less industrialized areas of the state, and not so much in the Piney Woods, 
where timber and oil production provided most of the economic impetus.  But BAWI was 
not the last program to bring industry to Mississippi.  That came later, from an unlikely 
source.14  
Despite the Great Depression, Willmut not only expanded its natural gas 
operation ? with the purchase of the Public Service Corporation assets, it also assumed a 
respectable gas pipeline network ? but also began prospecting on Tatum?s extensive 
landholdings.  Exploratory wells proved disappointing, although ironically Willmut did 
make a name for itself in Illinois oil production.  In 1940, following a visit by a Sun Oil 
Company magnetometer crew, the Tatums drilled an exploratory well at a promising 
location on one of their Lamar County properties.  The magnetic signal registered the 
signature of a substantial accumulation of iron, which usually indicated a salt dome 
caprock.  Hoping for a geyser of oil, or at least the whoosh of a lucrative natural gas well, 
the survey team struck nothing more remarkable than calcite and salt.  Willmut leased the 
sulfur rights to Freeport-Sulphur Company, and drilled deeper, to no avail.  There was 
neither oil nor natural gas at the dome, now named for the Tatum family.15    
                                                 
14 Ernest J. Hopkins, Mississippi?s BAWI Plan: Balance Agriculture With Industry, An Experiment 
In Industrial Subsidization  (Atlanta: Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1944), 1-4, 11, 34, 42-3. 
15 Hughes, Oil in the Deep South, 144. 
 
 43 
But there was plenty of salt.  Although the depth of the base of the dome had yet 
to be determined, it was obvious that it was an enormous mushroom-shaped diapir that 
measured well over a mile in diameter, and whose uppermost surface was still more than 
twelve hundred feet below ground level.  The Tatum Dome was born of the Louann Salt, 
yet it had no petroleum.  This was an irony that would not be lost on Willie Tatum or his 
sons.  In 1943, with World War II dominating the nation?s fuel demands, Gulf Oil16 
began prospecting just a few miles west of Tatum?s dry hole, near the small town of 
Baxterville, also located in Lamar County, and not far from Lumberton, Mississippi.  
This field eventually became the state?s most productive one, yielding nearly a quarter 
billion barrels of oil and more than 400 billion cubic feet of gas between 1944 and 
1990.17  Through a twist of geological fate, the vast wealth of the Baxterville field had 
eluded Tatum.  Yet it further focused the oil industry?s attention on the Piney Woods and 
fueled dreams of more hidden oil bonanzas in the region.   
Geological and petroleum journals reported the Tatum Dome?s existence, and it 
was noted on surveyor?s maps.  The salt was deep, but it was technically recoverable 
should the world salt market?s prices rise high enough to make it economically 
practicable.  Much the same could be said for the sulfur that could be recovered from the 
gypsum-rich caprock, but sinking a shaft to mine the deep deposits at the Tatum Dome 
made no economic sense since much more easily accessed sources of sulfur existed.  And 
                                                 
16 Gulf Oil emerged from a deal between Spindletop prospectors Guffey, Galey, and Lucas, 
backed by Pittsburgh bankers Andrew and Richard Mellon.  In May 1901, Guffey secured funding from the 
Mellons through the sale of 50,000 shares of stock, allowing him to buy out Galey and Lucas, creating the 
J. M. Guffey Company.  Six years later, he merged his operation with the Gulf Refining Company, which 
later became the Gulf Oil Company.  Shortly thereafter, Guffey was fired by the Mellons.  See Neil 
McElwee, ?Guffey and Galey ? Some People Get Around.?  
http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/12/guffey-and-galey-some-people-get-around (accessed September 9, 
2009) 
17 Hughes, Oil in the Deep South, 217-18. 
 
 44 
so the salt and sulfur on Tatum?s land remained buried and nearly forgotten.  The land 
over the Tatum Dome was left to the trees and the wildlife, with occasional visits from 
hunters and picnickers. 
In 1948, Willie Tatum died.  He left behind a thriving city of nearly thirty 
thousand residents transformed from the small town of little more than a thousand 
persons when he first arrived.  His sons, steeped in the timber and oil industry, inherited a 
business empire that encompassed much of the Piney Woods.  Other industries had come 
to the region, in part due to the wartime needs of the shipyards of Biloxi, Pascagoula, and 
Mobile to the south and southeast, and also because of the availability of road and rail 
transportation.  Nearly 700 people labored in the chemical industry ? a new category not 
listed in previous census reports.  Wood-based industries for Forrest County and 
Hattiesburg decreased from nearly a thousand in the 1930 census to about a third that 
number twenty years later.18  Census and occupational data show that industry continued 
to thrive in the Piney Woods despite the employment decline. 
The postwar and Cold War period fostered an increased atmosphere of social and 
racial tension in the South.  African Americans who had fought for their country and had 
earned the respect of white comrades in combat returned to an atmosphere of racial 
inequality.  Throughout Mississippi, racist groups including the Ku Klux Klan continued 
terror campaigns designed to cow local blacks and preserve the segregated status quo and 
                                                 
18 U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,  Fifteenth Census of the United States: 
1930.  Population, Volume III, Part 1;Reports By States, Showing the Composition and Characteristics of 
the Population for Counties, Cities, and Townships or Other Minor Civil Divisions; Alabama-Missouri.  
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932), 1301; U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of 
the Census,  A Report of the Seventeenth Decennial Census of the United States.  Census of Population: 
1950, Volume II, Characteristics of the Population; Number of Inhabitants, General and Detailed 
Characteristics of the Population, Part 24: Mississippi (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 
1952), 24-7, 24-46. 
 
 
 45 
white supremacy.  Interestingly, though, the number of the most violent of these terrorist 
actions, lynching, contrasted strongly between the numbers that took place in the state as 
a whole and those conducted in Forrest and Lamar counties, and indeed between the two 
counties themselves.  Taking the figures from Julius E. Thompson?s Lynchings in 
Mississippi, A History, 1865-1965, between 1890 and 2002, 617 people were lynched in 
the state, and of those, 14 were murdered in Forrest County and only one was lynched in 
Lamar County.  Bearing in mind that Lamar County has been and is primarily rural with 
Purvis as its county seat, while Forrest County has the much larger Hattiesburg as its seat, 
this might indicate that this violence likely came as a result of cosmopolitan contact 
rather than the agrarian subordination and subjugation seen in Mississippi?s Delta region.  
Part of the explanation for the relatively low numbers also comes from the racial makeup 
of the two counties: census data shows both to be primarily white.  This agrees with the 
industrial history of the region, which was neither plantation-based nor primarily slave-
driven.   
This is not to say that even in the most urban settings in the Piney Woods that 
segregation was not observed: it was as surely a social mechanism of oppression there as 
it was anywhere else, but it does not seem to have been as violently enforced.  
Newspapers of the period, such as the Hattiesburg American and the Laurel Leader-Post, 
regularly ran news stories with titles referring to ?Negroes,? obituaries segregated into 
?White? and ?Colored,? and the occasional advertisement for a Klan rally, but much of 
the violence generally appeared to be happening elsewhere. Whether this was because of 
 
 46 
the feeling that de facto segregation was not as threatened, or from self-deception 
resulting from the lower level of violence, remains open to question.19   
Mississippi itself remained a bastion of hard-line segregation.  The 1947 decision 
by President Harry Truman to desegregate the military and incorporate changes that 
threatened the South?s ?peculiar institution? caused a reaction in Mississippi, where 
?segregation forever? became the battle cry among many whites.  Following the 1954 
election, the firebrand segregationist Ross Barnett won his first term as Mississippi?s 
governor and represented a blatant rejection of federal power in his state.  Ironically, he 
did not object to the intrusion of the atom into Mississippi.  Although we cannot be 
certain, Barnett likely saw nuclear technology as a ready injection of cash into his state?s 
economy.20   
Politically, Mississippi was in flux.  The year Willie Tatum died was the same 
year that many southern Democratic politicians, enraged by Truman?s integrationist 
policies, left the party in protest to field their own Presidential candidate.  Mississippi?s 
delegation to the Democratic convention of 1947 was the first to defect, in what led to the 
formation of the States? Rights Party, commonly referred to as the ?Dixiecrats.?  In many 
ways this was a return to the Redemptionist mindset following the years of 
Reconstruction.  The titular head of the party that had originally been the political base of 
the segregationist system now threatened the social institutions that had become 
commonplace and accepted in the South.  Refusing this new course, many Southern 
Democrats instead defected to the Dixiecrats and began the trajectory that eventually 
                                                 
19 Julius E. Thompson, Lynchings in Mississippi: A History, 1865-2002 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland 
& Company, Inc., 2007), 12, 36, 49, 65, 84, 98, 120, 142, 158-60, 182-83, 185.   
20 Ross Barnett?s personal papers have not been archived; indeed no one knows where they are 
located.  It is probable that they are being retained by the Barnett family.  
 
 47 
made the South a conservative Republican stronghold, returning to the mantra of states? 
rights superseding national policies.  At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, 
Mississippi?s delegates led the secession from the Democrats to the States? Rights Party 
that later nominated South Carolina?s Strom Thurmond as its presidential candidate, and 
their own Fielding Wright as the vice-presidential nominee.21   
People of the Piney Woods certainly noticed this schism.  Though the period 
between 1948 and 1960 were years of significant growth in terms of economy and 
population, they were marred by racist rhetoric and an avowed determination to keep 
Mississippi segregated.  According to historian Erle Johnston, every major election 
during this period became a referendum on segregation, and in every one, the Piney 
Woods had a candidate running for the governor or lieutenant governor?s office.  In the 
1955 gubernatorial election, Hattiesburg native Paul B. Johnson Jr. lost to Attorney 
General James P. Coleman and ran during the next election as Ross Barnett?s lieutenant 
governor, finally reaching the governor?s office in 1964.  During the period before 
assuming the governorship, Johnson was an ardent segregationist, suggesting in the 1955 
election that police power be used to maintain the state?s ?separate but equal? policies.22   
Ross Barnett was an icon of segregationist political power.  From his election in 
1955 to his departure from politics in 1964, he always appeared to be at the forefront of 
racial division, actively denying James Meredith access to the University of Mississippi 
in 1962, and justifying white attacks on African-American bathers on Biloxi beaches.  A 
model ?states? rights? governor, Barnett never wasted an opportunity to stand against the 
                                                 
21 Erle Johnston,  Mississippi?s Defiant Years 1953-1973: An Interpretive Documentary with 
Personal Experiences  (Forest, MS: Lake Harbor Publishers, 1990), 28. 
22 Ibid., 31; Stephan D. Shaffer, ?Party and Electoral Politics in Mississippi? in Dale Krane and 
Stephan D. Shaffer, eds., Mississippi Government and Politics: Modernizers Versus Traditionalists 
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 82-83. 
 
 48 
rising national tide of desegregation.  The election of John Kennedy signaled an 
important change in federal pressure on the South to alter its social institution.  Barnett 
and the Kennedy Administration seemed to be natural antagonists, yet they found ways to 
work with each other.  Barnett was a bigot, but he, Johnson, and John Stennis, who 
entered the United States Senate in 1947, were canny politicians who differed greatly 
from stereotypical ?good old boys.?  Historians Stephan Shaffer and Dale Krane note that 
Barnett went so far as to discuss with Robert Kennedy a plan to enact a ?symbolic 
surrender? at Ole Miss during the James Meredith crisis.  Forced to accede to federal 
marshals at gunpoint, Barnett would save face in the eyes of his constituency while 
allowing Meredith into the university.  The plan was cancelled for fear that state 
authorities might in turn draw their weapons on the federal marshals.  Although publicly 
defying the Kennedy brothers on the Meredith issue, and capitulating in the face of force, 
Barnett also realized the change in national attitudes when Cleve McDowell, another 
African-American, applied to enter Ole Miss?s Law School several months after the riots 
caused by Meredith?s admission there.  Barnett overrode actions to close the school, 
understanding there was little point in fighting the same battle again to the detriment of 
the school, its students, and the state.23   
Nevertheless, Barnett was publicly committed to preserving the outdated social 
mores of Mississippi against the encroachment of federal plans to dismember and destroy 
it.  He was not committed to excluding all federal influence, and correspondence 
indicates that he and his successor, Johnson, were both more than amenable to allowing 
atomic testing in the state.  This was due to two things: prestige and money.  Atomic 
                                                 
23 Johnston, Mississippi?s Defiant Years, 200; Stephan D. Shaffer and Dale Krane, ?The Origins 
and Evolution of a Traditionalist Society? in Krane and Shaffer, eds., Mississippi Government and Politics, 
83.   
 
 49 
testing represented America?s highest technology.  As Mississippi was a poorer, 
primarily agricultural state, atomic testing could prove to be the ultimate pinnacle in the 
BAWI concept: the state had the potential to serve a base for the highest of high-tech 
defense industries.  This was not as unreasonable as it may seem: neighboring Alabama 
was primarily agricultural before industry began to flow into the state as a result of 
outside economic sources following the Civil War.  Over time, Alabama had become 
home to high-tech defense industries, such as the development of military aviation at 
Maxwell Air Force base and the concentration of ex-German rocket and missile engineers 
at Redstone Arsenal and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.  Mississippi was 
already home to a large army base at Camp Shelby, located in the heart of the Piney 
Woods.  An influx of scientists and technicians could rehabilitate Mississippi?s image.  
But unlike the original BAWI program, Mississippi did not have to sell itself to outside 
industry, and lure it with publicly-funded facilities.  All it had to do was open the door to 
the federal government.   
The most likely reason why Barnett was happy to welcome the Atomic Energy 
Commission?s interest in his state was that with scientists and technicians, well-drillers 
and various support personnel, would also come a substantial amount of money.  Initially, 
Hattiesburg?s economy anticipated some $15-$20,000,000 from an atomic program, in 
stark contrast to Faulkner?s dour impression of outside intrusion into the Piney Woods.  
The city would certainly be the center of operations as it was the largest transportation 
node in the area.  There were also the structures necessary for the control, monitoring, 
and safety systems of the test site would have to be built, as well as   infrastructure 
improvements to local runways and roads, all paid for again by the federal government.  
 
 50 
The influx of federal capital was certainly welcome, and along with the millions to be 
spent on the test site and operations, there was a windfall when the salt dome was 
prepared for testing.  As a byproduct of excavation and test site preparation deep into the 
salt dome, at least two million tons of salt, worth at least $16,000,000 would be brought 
to the surface.24  
There may be another explanation for Barnett?s puzzling attitude towards bringing 
the AEC into Mississippi.  The atomic program was a carrot and social change was a 
stick.  A common tactic in relations between the federal government and recalcitrant 
southern states, highway and airport development also served this aim.  Local leaders 
received increased economic benefits and prestige in exchange for accepting growing 
federal influence.  By the 1960s, the Department of Defense has assumed a primary role 
in this process, and the South emerged as a crucial region for military-related activities.  
Mississippi was no exception, and during the period between 1951 and 1976 saw an 
increase of more than twenty five times in the number of defense contracts awarded.  To 
a great extent, these were rewards for acceptable behavior, with the unspoken threat that 
what the federal government granted, it could take away.  To Barnett?s credit, it appears 
that he was adept at playing both sides: negotiating with the Kennedy administration 
while continuing to appeal to his white power base.25  
There were potentially serious drawbacks to any decision to carry out atomic 
testing in south Mississippi.  Unlike the Nevada Test Site (NTS), there was no large 
reservation at the candidate salt domes to act as a buffer zone in case of an accidental 
                                                 
24 Hattiesburg American, Jan 21, Feb. 3, 1961. 
25 Charles S. Bullock III and Janna Deitz, ?Transforming the South: The Role of the Federal 
Government? in Craig S. Pasoe, Karen Trahan Leathem and Andy Ambrose, eds., The American South in 
the Twentieth Century (Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 2005), p. 248; Schulman, ?From Cotton 
Belt to Sunbelt,? 228, 332, 360. 
 
 51 
radiation release.  In case of containment failure, radioactive materials would be in 
immediate contact with pasture and farmland.  The Tatum site was located roughly 130 
miles north of New Orleans, 100 miles northwest of Mobile, Alabama, 80 miles north of 
Biloxi and Gulfport, 25 miles southwest of Hattiesburg, and 12 miles west of Purvis, 
Mississippi.  Winds had to be light, steady, and had to be from the right direction, ideally 
from the south blowing to the north.  Such winds are common in the Piney Woods, and 
occur almost daily.  As the ground heats up more quickly than the Gulf of Mexico to the 
south, the air over the ground rises more quickly than the air over the water.  Air tends to 
flow inland from the Gulf - commonly called the ?sea breeze.?  Along the Gulf Coast, 
much of the thunderstorm activity occurs when a strong moisture-laden sea breeze pushes 
inland as a ?sea breeze front,? and is then lifted by the warming effect of the ground.  
Preferably, there needed to be a high pressure region over the eastern Gulf or western 
Atlantic, pushing the air steadily over the Piney Woods from the south.  This pattern is 
aided during the summer months as the ?Bermuda High? pressure system builds up.   
This weather pattern is also why the Gulf Coast is subjected to some of the most 
destructive weather on earth.  The Bermuda High acts as an enormous steering system for 
tropical storms and hurricanes.  It tends to push storms in the Atlantic southward towards 
Florida and the Keys, and once past the most powerful influence of the high, these 
weather patterns commonly travel north towards the coastlines of Florida, Alabama, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.  The threat of tropical storms and hurricanes had to be 
taken seriously, even a hundred miles inland from the coast.  Tropical weather aside, 
every day brought the potential for heavy thunderstorms to suddenly materialize and pelt 
the site with torrential rains, lightning, heavy winds, hail, and the occasional tornado. 
 
 52 
The Piney Woods had been blessed with ample stands of tall longleaf pine trees, 
and was later found to have substantial deposits of natural gas and oil.  The salt that had 
proved twenty years earlier to be uneconomical to extract could be recovered as a 
byproduct of a far more lucrative operation than a salt and sulfur mine.  Frank Tatum 
wrote to Senators John Stennis and James Eastland, as well as Congressman James 
Colmer on October 29, 1960, regarding an unusual visit by the representatives of the 
United States Army Corps of Engineers concerning the Tatum Dome: ?These gentlemen 
came first with the request that they be allowed to go on the land.  When we inquired 
why, they said they simply wanted to look it over.  After a number of conferences with 
them, it finally developed that the Atomic Energy Commission wanted to do some atomic 
shooting in the salt dome.?26 
 
      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
26 Tatum to Eastland, Stennis, and Colmer, Oct. 28, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 1960-
1961, folder 27, series 12 ? Atomic Energy Commission, Stennis Collection, Mississippi State University 
Congressional and Political Research Center, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University 
(hereafter documents will be cited by document, subseries file, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.)   
  
 
 53 
Chapter Three 
 
The Road to Dribble 
  
The underground atomic tests conducted near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, were part 
of a larger series of tests, known as ?Vela Uniform? (VU), which was itself part of an 
overarching program codenamed ?Vela.?  The other two components of Vela, ?Vela 
Hotel? and ?Vela Sierra,? were respectively tasked with detecting space-based and high-
altitude tests.  Vela was designed to increase the abilities of observers to detect covert and 
illicit nuclear testing, as well as to accurately assess the strength and properties of 
legitimate nuclear tests from long distances.  Despite the agreement of the Soviet Union, 
Great Britain, and the United States to move testing underground by the beginning of the 
1960s, these nations were still suspicious of each other and were not quite amenable to 
having observers from other countries present when they tested their most sophisticated 
military technology.  Moreover, the impossibility of completely isolating such observers 
from test workers and civilians represented a perceptible security threat.  Mechanical on-
site observation stations were vulnerable to tampering or sabotage.  What was most 
desperately needed were new, accurate means to observe the conduct of atomic tests over 
distances of hundreds or thousands of miles.  The VU program, directed at underground 
test detection, was intended to address this need.  
 Atomic test monitoring can be traced back to the first test of an atomic bomb.  
Monitoring is only part of the challenge.  It is far easier to do so when the planned time of 
a test is known.  When it is not, the test must first be detected before it can be analyzed.  
From the first atomic test to the announcement of the Vela program, the United States 
tried and assessed several methods of remote nuclear test detection and monitoring.  The 
 
 54 
increase in political momentum towards removing nuclear tests from the atmosphere 
caused some proven detection methods to be abandoned and replaced by others that were 
previously considered to be impractical.     
  The first nuclear test took place in the predawn hours of July 12, 1945, in an 
isolated area of desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico.  Along with the scientific 
monitoring of the test was an unofficial experiment designed to rapidly evaluate the 
explosion and decide the winner of a betting pool set up among the new weapon?s 
designers.  Yield values ranging from zero (a dud) to 45 kilotons (45kt),1 were 
established before the test, codenamed ?Trinity.?  Each bet cost a dollar: Edward Teller 
bought the highest yield, while Los Alamos laboratory director J. Robert Oppenheimer 
bet on a modest 800-ton yield.   Knowing it would take some time to evaluate the test 
thoroughly through radiochemical methods following the experiment (should it succeed), 
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi proposed a simpler means to settle the wager.  He held 
scraps of paper in his hand and waited for the countdown to zero.2    
Fermi had been primarily concerned with research into the bombardment of 
elements with neutrons and had presided over the first sustained atomic chain reaction in 
December 1942, when he oversaw the withdrawal of the control rods of the first atomic 
pile in the squash court beneath Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.  Fermi had 
been responsible for crucial discoveries regarding nuclear materials development and 
atomic reactors, both vital steps towards development of the bomb.  The Trinity test 
                                                 
1 Explosive yields from nuclear weapons are expressed in terms of equivalent tonnage of TNT.  
The most common benchmark is the kiloton, or 1,000 tons of TNT.  Later devices reached the megaton 
range, which is 1,000,000 tons of TNT, or 1,000 kilotons.  All explosive yield data expressed in this work 
will be indicated by an Arabic numeral followed by the appropriate denotation kiloton (kt) or megaton (mt) 
where applicable.   
2 Edward Teller, with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and 
Politics (Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2001), 211.  Teller recalled the upper figure was 40 kt; Richard 
Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 656. 
 
 55 
began the atomic age and led to an arms race; the paper in his hand would begin the 
process by which the technology and the arms competition would be restrained.  Ten 
thousand yards from Ground Zero, he waited for the test to commence.  At 5:30 AM, the 
area was instantly bathed in a blinding light reminiscent of the midday sun.  As Fermi 
recalled, he opened his hand containing small bits of paper as the blast wave visibly raced 
towards him some forty seconds after the detonation: ?I tried to estimate its strength by 
dropping from about six feet small pieces of paper before, during and after the passage of 
the blast wave.  Since, at the time, there was no wind, I could observe very distinctly and 
actually measure the displacement of the pieces of paper that were in the process of 
falling while the blast was passing.  The shift was about 2 ? meters, which, at the time, I 
estimated to correspond to the blast that would be produced by ten thousand tons of 
T.N.T.?  Fermi?s measurement was significantly conservative, being some 8kt under the 
actual yield, determined by later radiochemical analyses as 18.6kt.   In what was the first 
known attempt to assess the power of an atomic test apart from an analytic measurement 
or official disclosure, Fermi had used simple barometric fluctuation in conjunction with a 
dynamic pressure wave to assess the explosive yield.  Although the government had 
placed barometric and seismic monitoring equipment at distances of up to several miles 
from Ground Zero, these were considered less important for monitoring the test as they 
were for limiting damage claims to personal property that might be caused by the blast.3 
The radiochemical analysis of the Trinity bomb was easy to accomplish ? samples 
from the test were available and collected with relative ease.  Yet it was a different story 
                                                 
3 Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 656, 674, 677.  Physicist I. I. Rabi won the bet ? Rhodes 
notes that due to his being last to enter the pool, the only remaining slot was for 18 kt ? close to the actual 
yield; Charles A. Ziegler and David Jacobson, Spying Without Spies: Origins of America?s Secret Nuclear 
Surveillance System (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 38. 
 
 56 
when it came to the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima.  Physicist and engineer Luis 
Alvarez flew on the Hiroshima mission aboard one of the accompanying B-29s.4  Alvarez 
supervised the dropping of several parachute-borne detector packages that gave initial 
data on the detonation of the ?Little Boy? weapon over Hiroshima.  Incorporating 
microphones to measure the positive and negative dynamic pressures created by the blast, 
the detectors were developed by Alvarez in response to a request from Oppenheimer to 
develop a means to assess the performance of the untested gun-type uranium bomb.  The 
detectors then sent telemetry data back to the raiding aircraft via a radio transmitter and 
delivered information on the barometric effects of the blast.  Alvarez had in effect found 
a way to replicate Fermi?s experiment and in the process invented the ancestor to the 
dropsondes that are used today by meteorologists to study hurricanes.5    
Scientists discovered a second important means of test detection and monitoring.  
Knowing that volcanically-produced particulate matter rose high into the atmosphere, 
they suspected that the dust created by a nuclear bomb would also have quantifiable 
properties and could be collected as it floated in the stratosphere.  Aircraft equipped with 
special filtration devices to sample the atmosphere flew carefully planned routes that 
intersected high-altitude air currents.  After the airplane landed, the filters were analyzed 
with a special Geiger counter.  Radioactive debris was readily detected in the upper 
                                                 
4 Contrary to popular belief, neither the Hiroshima nor the Nagasaki missions were flown by 
single airplanes, but were accompanied by camera-carrying and instrumented B-29s charged with 
collecting data on the attacks.  
5 Luis Alvarez, Alvarez:Adventures of a Physicist (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987), 139-41; 
Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest 
Lawrence, and Edward Teller (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), 139. Dropsondes or 
radiosondes are used to collect information as they fall from an aircraft and transmit it telemetrically to a 
receiver.  Many are specially outfitted to collect meteorological data such as temperature, humidity, 
barometric pressure, and wind speed, and are crucial tools in tropical weather forecasting and research. 
 
 57 
atmosphere using this method.  This became the primary means whereby the United 
States stood the best chance of detecting weapons development by unfriendly nations.6  
The next atomic devices to be detonated were targeted on a fleet of warships 
moored in Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.  The fleet consisted of vessels from the United 
States, Germany, and Japan, and represented nearly every class of naval combat vessel, 
from the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga to battleships, cruisers, and submarines.  The test 
program, code-named ?Crossroads,? was initially to comprise three tests: the air-dropped 
shot, named ?Able?; a shallow underwater shot, named ?Baker?; and a deep underwater 
shot, named ?Charlie.?  There was little concern that the bombs would not work.  Shortly 
after the Able test bomb missed the target fleet, unmanned drone aircraft flew through the 
rising cloud; manned B-29s carrying special oil-coated paper filters were later flown 
through the debris cloud as it drifted away from the target area.  Once the bombers 
landed, their filters were removed and placed against specially sensitized film.  The 
radioactive particles produced spots on the film, and after it was developed it was used as 
a map for analysts to find individual specks of debris in the filters.  These specks were 
then collected and analyzed to indicate how well the weapons performed.7 
Acoustic monitoring and seismic detection were also investigated as ways to 
detect atomic blasts.  These methods had been used during the Trinity test, and were 
again at Bikini in 1946.  Pressure sensors and seismographs measured the intensity of 
shock waves on several islands of the lagoon with, and sensors were also placed on the 
floor of the lagoon.   In regard to the acoustic method, the possibilities of blast detection 
                                                 
6 Ziegler and Jacobson, Spying Without Spies, 38-39. 
7 Ibid., 46.  The Charlie test was cancelled due to the unexpected radiation from the Baker test; 
Charles Ziegler, ?Waiting for Joe-1: Decisions Leading to the Detection of Russia?s First Atomic Bomb 
Test,?  Social Studies of Science 18 (May 1988): 213. 
 
 58 
through the atmosphere came from a cataclysmic and unlikely source: the volcanic 
explosion of the island of Krakatoa in 1883, when sound waves from the blast 
reverberated back and forth numerous times across the globe.  Although greater by orders 
of magnitude than the largest atomic bombs of the 1940s (it was estimated to have 
released some 500mt of energy), the blast?s seven detectable atmospheric reverberations 
suggested the possibility that an anticipated Soviet test might be detected by ultra-
sensitive barometers, or microbarographs.  Barometers might be placed at likely 
antipodean locations on the opposite side of the globe from where a test was likely to take 
place.  Scientists supposed that as the circular blast wave radiated away from the burst 
point, the shock front would expand radially outward, finally meeting on the opposite 
side of the globe.  There it would be detected and analyzed for magnitude of yield.  It was 
an intriguing idea ? the only problem with it was that it did not work.  Later experiments 
by the United States showed that numerous atmospheric factors occluded symmetrical 
shock wave propagation.  The signal that reached the antipode would be too disrupted to 
be of use.8 
The same uncertainties that made barometric and acoustic monitoring unfeasible 
made seismic monitoring inconceivable.  Seismic equipment was unable to detect an 
atomic burst at any useful range; during the Yoke test, seismographs were unable to 
record the blast from 500 miles.  Tectonic phenomena could be seismically detected at 
great distances, but there were numerous uncertainties as to how one might distinguish 
between an earthquake or volcanic eruption and an atomic bomb.  Seismology promised 
                                                 
8 Both acoustic and barometric means of monitoring nuclear tests are mentioned in reference to 
detection methods.  The barometric methods utilized microbarographs and other sensitive equipment; the 
acoustic monitoring stations were literally a series of listening posts; Jonathan  Weisgall, Operation 
Crossroads: The Atomic Tests At Bikini Atoll (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 119; Ziegler and 
Jacobson, Spying without Spies, 45, 103. 
 
 59 
to be a more useful means of detecting atomic tests, but uncertainties as to what signal 
strength an above-ground detonation might create were an important concern in the 
creation of a practical test detection method.  As it turned out, seismic methods of 
detecting atmospheric explosions would not work, unless the test device was detonated in 
close proximity to the ground.  It appeared for the time being that the aerial sampling 
method ? ?sniffing? the atmosphere for fallout ? was still the most fruitful of any 
proposed means of detecting a Soviet test.9 
Atmospheric sampling methods were simple and used equipment that had already 
been developed.  They allowed timely detection of tests owing to the fairly consistent 
wind patterns at higher altitudes.  Soviet tests, should they occur, could be detected 
within a day or two, although this depended on whether the sampling mission flown by 
an individual aircraft penetrated the debris cloud.  Samples found in the oil-soaked paper 
filters were chemically analyzed, allowing precise information to be collected regarding 
bomb design and yield.  Those samples indicating a high ratio of plutonium to other 
radionuclides might indicate an inefficient design, wherein the reaction was not sufficient 
to consume the fission material; a sample with a high level of plutonium?s fission product 
americium could indicate that plutonium fission had taken place efficiently.  The 
inclusion of other materials in fission debris can suggest design elements as well.  A large 
amount of beryllium could suggest an added neutron reflector within the device, and so 
on.  The process of chemically analyzing bomb debris for data regarding bomb 
performance worked, but it depended solely on the collection of debris.   
                                                 
9 Ziegler and Jacobson, Spying Without Spies, 67, 102-103, 167. 
 
 60 
Operation Sandstone consisted of three ?shots? in April and May 1948 on the 
Pacific island of Enewetak.10  Sandstone was a test program designed to evaluate new 
designs for deployable weapons.  It was also an excellent opportunity to test detection 
methods.  Two of the three important avenues of detection, acoustic and seismic 
detection, yielded poor data.  But the air sampling method again worked well, and a 
serendipitous discovery further endorsed its use.  Technicians at Tracerlab, a private 
Boston company that contracted with the government to analyze materials from atomic 
tests, analyzed the collection apparatus and noticed an interesting phenomenon ? tiny 
spherules had mixed into the sampled dust and debris from the test.  The lab quickly 
determined that these spherules were metallic, and were residue from the device itself.  
They not only stood out from the sandy debris from Enewetak, they also strongly 
suggested that even in a high-altitude test, bomb residue could be collected. 11   
One obvious drawback to relying on aerial sampling was that it could not provide 
information as to the exact moment of the detonation.  Acoustic and seismic methods had 
failed to provide conclusive data during Sandstone.  The largest device tested during 
Sandstone was a 49kt weapons-development shot code-named ?Yoke? ? well over twice 
the yield of the bomb dropped at Nagasaki.  All of the tests were conducted on steel 
towers two hundred feet above the ground.  Although the proximity to the ground was 
enough to generate large volumes of fallout, ?Yoke,? the largest device that the United 
States had tested to date, did not generate sufficient seismic energy to travel from 
                                                 
10 There are evidently several ways to spell this name: Enewetak, Eniwetok, and Eniwetak.  This is 
due to attempts to accommodate Western spelling with Pacific island languages. 
11 Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig, Nuclear 
Weapons Databook Volume II: U. S. Nuclear Warhead Production  (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing 
Company, 1987), 151; Ziegler, ?Waiting for Joe-1?, 213, 215. Zeigler?s article gives a detailed history of 
Tracerlab, and its importance to radiological analysis of atomic testing debris. ; Richard Pfau, No Sacrifice 
Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), 96. 
 
 61 
Enewetak in the Pacific to seismic recording stations in the United States; indeed it was 
undetectable 500 miles from the shot point.  Instantaneous notification of any Soviet 
tests, though they were not immediately expected, required technology and methods not 
yet developed. 12 
Aerial sampling proved its importance on September 3, 1949.  Noting elevated 
radioactivity during a routine sampling mission, the pilot, technicians, and crew of an air 
force Boeing WB-29 brought home incontrovertible evidence that the United States? 
nuclear monopoly had been lost.  Despite the general attitude that the Soviet Union 
would not be able to test a bomb of their own for some time, the aerial sampling missions 
had been flown in the knowledge that one would eventually occur.  Known in the West as 
Joe-1, the device was comparable to the first American test device ? not surprising due to 
the aid provided to the Soviets courtesy of Klaus Fuchs and other agents operating within 
the nuclear weapons development complex.  Still under a semi wartime footing under 
Joseph Stalin and his sadistic lieutenant, Lavrenti Beria, the Soviet atomic program 
rapidly escalated ? the air force and Tracerlab were to be busy until the Limited Test Ban 
Treaty in 1963.13   
Joe-1 was an eye-opener.  Once it had been confirmed that the Soviets possessed 
a bomb, it was crucial to maintain vigilance over the development of their arsenal.  It also 
became necessary to distinguish between American and Soviet material that had been 
collected.  Espionage and high-altitude aerial sampling could ensure that most of the 
collected matter was of Soviet origin.  Without advance notification, radiochemical 
                                                 
12 Cochran, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 151; Ziegler and Jacobson, Spying Without Spies, 
133. 
13 Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 
370-71. 
 
 62 
analysis determined the date a particular test was conducted.  Remarkably, the American 
aerial monitoring system was even able to assess the amount of plutonium being 
produced in the Soviet Union by sampling the atmosphere in several locations and 
analyzing the percentage of krypton-85, which is a byproduct of plutonium production 
and separation.14  
From the detection of Joe-1 until the detonation of America?s largest test, ?Castle 
Bravo? in 1954 with a yield of 15mt, the United States tested thirty-seven devices; the 
Soviet Union tested seven.  Despite the technological triumph and military significance 
of achieving increasingly larger fission, and later, fusion reactions, the residue from 
atmospheric testing quickly overshadowed any benefits these tests presented.  The 
American nuclear arsenal promised to safeguard the country from communist aggression.  
But Americans themselves were not immune to the effects of fallout.  In 1953, St. 
George, Utah, and surrounding areas were irradiated when unexpected device yields and 
wind patterns blew fallout from the nearby Nevada Test Site (NTS) over pastoral land.  
Mysterious illnesses and mass die-offs of sheep aroused fears about atomic testing in the 
continental United States, although most of this concern remained concealed from the 
general public. 15  
Nuclear tests quickly grew larger.  Most of America?s largest tests were 
conducted at remote locations in the Pacific Ocean.  In just nine years, explosive yield 
had ballooned from Trinity?s roughly 18kt to Bravo?s 15mt; in essence the destructive 
power increased by a factor of over 825.  Bravo?s ash-like precipitation created an 
                                                 
14 Ziegler, ?Waiting for Joe-1,? 223-24. 
15 Pavel Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 485.  
These devices included the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb, with a 400 kt yield; Howard Ball, Justice 
Downwind: America?s Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 
56-71; Cochran, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 152-54 
 
 63 
international furor when accidental irradiation of civilians occurred, including the 
Japanese crew of the Lucky Dragon and Marshall Islanders.  Like the irradiation of St. 
George, this was due to the unexpected yield of the weapon, and unpredictable wind 
patterns.  Radiation effects were also found in the tuna caught in the area, causing fears 
about the safety of this Japanese dietary staple.  The victims of America?s military use of 
atomic weapons were now victimized further by American nuclear weapons program. 16  
Ironically, the earlier 1952 ?Ivy Mike? test pointed the way towards the future of 
nuclear test detection and limitation.  Banned from the test site due to his predilection for 
constantly changing aspects of site operations, Edward Teller nervously awaited the news 
of the test, and whether it had succeeded or failed. Teller felt slighted, because with 
Stanley Ulam he had finally managed to solve the problems inherent in achieving 
thermonuclear fusion ? the key to the ?Super? or hydrogen bomb.  Using a seismic 
instrument at the University of California that recorded data on photographic paper, he 
watched a pinpoint of light from the machine in a darkened room.  15 minutes after the 
scheduled shot time, Teller thought that he saw a faint motion of the light.  A check of the 
paper records confirmed his observation.17 
Ivy Mike?s seismic signal was detected primarily due to two factors: first, the 
device detonated at ground level.  Not a weapon but a physics experiment, Mike was 
enormous, comprising a large building and refrigeration plant designed to keep its  
deuterium fuel, a type of hydrogen, liquefied.  The explosive energy, 10.4mt, was 
transferred directly to the ground, with no air gap to attenuate the blast signal.  Second, 
                                                 
16 Rhodes, Dark Sun, 541-42.  Castle Bravo was a weapon test, and led to deliverable bombs.  
17 It has been widely reported that Teller was a constant tinkerer, and that those involved in the 
tests were relieved that he would not be present ? Teller claims differently that it was his involvement with 
the new Livermore Laboratory that prevented his attendance, despite the ?kindly? invitation of Los Alamos 
Laboratory director Norris Bradbury to observe the test.  Teller and Shoolery, Memoirs, 351- 52. 
 
 64 
Mike?s yield was at the time the largest explosion produced by humans.  Teller had 
teleseismically monitored this nuclear test though oddly he later became a vocal opponent 
of seismology as a primary means of test detection.   Teller noted in his memoirs that 
Livermore director Herbert York supported the growing call for an atomic testing 
moratorium and a ban on atmospheric testing and also believed that seismology would 
serve just as well for detection purposes in underground tests as aerial sampling had done 
for atmospheric tests. 
Teller?s opposition to relying on seismic detection methods lay more with his 
suspicion of Soviet intent than with his distrust of a relatively young science.  The issue 
was not whether seismology could be made sensitive enough to detect underground tests, 
but whether a low-yield underground test could be effectively hidden among the 
background noise of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  Underground testing in 
earthquake-prone areas might be simply misread, or could possibly be paired up with an 
earthquake, which could mask the test.  As Teller later stated, as long as testing remained 
atmospheric, it was easily detectable ? for him, a nuclear-armed Soviet Union was still 
the primary threat, despite ?a few highly publicized liberal reforms in the period 
following Stalin?s regime.?18  Underground testing presented difficulties in detection that 
Teller was certain were impossible to overcome and that problems with detection might 
lead to Soviet superiority in weapons design, whereas open-air tests allowed for the 
continued type of radiochemical analysis that the United States knew it could rely upon.  
Such sampling had revealed the Soviet first attempt at a thermonuclear bomb, the RDS-6, 
detonated on August 12, 1953.  Radiological analysis of the test debris allowed physicist 
Hans Bethe in effect to ?recreate? the bomb ? later it was shown that his analysis had 
                                                 
18 Ibid., 433. 
 
 65 
been remarkably accurate. Underground testing would prevent releases of radioactive 
materials into the atmosphere that were crucial to determining the level of Soviet nuclear 
weapons development.19 
America?s atomic scientists believed that they should play a critical role in 
constraining nuclear weapons development.  They belonged to an arcane fraternity ? an 
international brother- and sisterhood that had transcended international boundaries before 
World War II.  Not only did many dream of restoring this super-national correspondence 
as a way of overcoming the damage wrought by the war, they were encouraged by the 
administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower that they would be the perfect persons for the 
Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy to be held in 1955.20 Although they 
could not deter nations from fighting, they could limit nuclear arsenals and help to 
prevent nations from using the weapons they had created.  They would also become 
responsible for preparing the means to end the need for atmospheric testing, including 
developing new detection and monitoring methods.  If the nuclear genie could not be 
forced back into his bottle, perhaps he could at least be forced underground, where he 
posed less of a threat. 
The year 1955 was critical for atomic testing.  The United States tested at least 
fourteen atomic devices, thirteen of which were in the atmosphere, detonated either on 
towers or on the ground; the majority of these tests were under 10kt, with many being of 
a 1kt yield.  The Soviet Union detonated seven with a wide range of yield; from a single 
                                                 
 
19 Thomas Ott,  The American Experience: Race for the Superbomb  Produced and directed by 
Thomas Ott, 120 min., 51 Pegasi Pictures, Inc., 1999. Videocassette; Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear 
Forces, 443. 
20 Robert Gilpin, American Scientists and Nuclear Weapons Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 
University Press, 1962), 152. 
 
 66 
ton as part of a torpedo warhead test, to a 1.6mt  yield as part of their first true two-stage 
thermonuclear bomb.21    
Soviet weapons technology had made a leap forward, and so did their political 
leadership.  Stalin?s death in 1953 unleashed a spasm of uncertainty and chaos in the 
Soviet government.  The most brutal totalitarian aspects of the government were 
controlled by Beria, the man who had overseen the crash program to build Joe-1.  He 
rapidly assumed power, if only for a short period before being deposed and executed.  
His replacement was Georgi Malenkov, whose tenure was brief as well, before being 
forced out of power.  In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev attained political supremacy.  Although 
numerous differences existed between the two men, one was particularly important: 
Malenkov was convinced that the Soviet Union would be devastated in a nuclear war, 
while Khrushchev initially shared Stalin?s sense of nuclear invulnerability.22   
There was a temporary thaw in Cold War relations in 1955.  The Soviet 
government offered a ?major concession? in which they granted that inspection and on-
site monitoring were necessary to advance general disarmament.  Although they included 
unrealistic demands (such as eliminating all overseas United States military bases), it 
indicated that the Soviets would be willing after all to negotiate some form of nuclear 
control treaty.  The Soviets also called for the cessation of all nuclear testing. The 
meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev in Geneva reached no further conclusions 
on the issue.  The Soviet leader concluded,  
 
                                                 
 
21 Cochrane, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook , 154-55; Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear 
Forces, 486-67.  
22 Edward Crankshaw and Strobe Talbot, translator and ed., Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: 
Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 342. 
 
 67 
We were encouraged, realizing now that our enemies probably feared us 
as much as we feared them.  They rattled their sabers and tried to pressure us into 
agreements which were more profitable for them than for us because they were 
frightened of us? .They now knew that they had to respect our borders and our 
rights, and that they couldn?t get what they wanted by force or by blackmail.  
They realized that they would have to build their relations with us in new 
assumptions and new expectations if they really wanted peace.23 
 
One of the issues Eisenhower raised with the Soviet delegation in Geneva was his 
proposal of an ?Open Skies? policy.  Concerned less with detecting tests than spotting the 
impending signs of a surprise attack, the Open Skies policy was a step on the road to 
more comprehensive nuclear weapons control policies.  The Soviets remembered German 
reconnaissance aircraft over their airfields in the days and weeks before Hitler launched 
Operation Barbarossa in 1941, and rejected the proposal; the war was still too fresh in the 
minds of those making Soviet policy for them not to be skeptical of American motives.  
In retrospect, it seems almost ludicrous that Eisenhower proposed it, despite the later 
success of space-based reconnaissance, because the technologies had yet to be developed 
to make such activities possible.24   
The United States tested a 1.7kt device at the Nevada Test Site during Operation 
?Plumbob? in 1957.  Code named ?Rainier,? it was the first American attempt at fully 
containing an atomic test underground.  The radioactive contamination remained isolated 
under a mountain ridge in the cavity created by the detonation and there was little or no 
surface disturbance.  Aircraft or satellites might not be able to photograph underground 
tests below a certain size, or ones detonated at a depth where surface effects were not 
apparent.  Radiochemical analysis of atmospheric testing debris would be useless ? there 
                                                 
 
23 Gilpin, American Scientists, 144; Crankshaw and Talbot, Khrushchev Remembers, 400. 
24 Gilpin, American Scientists, 162-63.   
 
 68 
simply would be none released unless there was a catastrophic accident that caused the 
test chamber to vent to the atmosphere.  Finally, the ground where Rainier was conducted 
consisted of a volcanic material called tuff, and it dampened the seismic signal. 25 
The potential for cloaking future tests caused great concern in parts of the nuclear 
weapons community.  Teller, an ardent anticommunist, suspected the Soviet Union of 
malfeasance at every turn.  Beginning in 1957, he led one side of a debate that divided 
members of the scientific community for years to come: should nuclear weapons continue 
to be tested out in the open where they were more easily monitored, or should they be 
conducted underground where the contamination was contained?  Teller supported the 
former, and as George Kistiakowsky noted, was particularly adept along with his 
lieutenants with devising numerous ways that the Soviets might circumvent a limited or 
comprehensive test ban.  Kistiakowsky was a former Los Alamos scientist and member 
of the President?s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), later serving as the Special 
Assistant for Science and Technology.  He had worked on the implosion system for the 
Trinity bomb and subsequently was well acquainted with most of the atomic scientists in 
the United States.  He opposed the perpetually suspicious Teller, who believed that 
nuclear testing was an absolute necessity to the security of the West.  Teller and several 
other scientists, notably Ernest O. Lawrence and Dr. Richard Latter from RAND,26 were 
members of what was called the ?infinite containment? school of thought, which imposed 
a monochromatic conditional system upon international affairs: either the nations of the 
                                                 
25 Cochrane, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 157; United States Congress, Office of Technical 
Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions. OTA-ISC-414 (Washington, DC: 
Government Printing Office, 1989), 31. 
26 The RAND (Research AND Development) corporation is a think tank begun in 1946 by the air 
force.  Dr. John McLucas, Kenneth J. Alnwick and Lawrence R. Benson, Reflections of a Technocrat: 
Managing Defense, Air, and Space Programs During the Cold War (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air 
University Press, 2006), 107. 
 
 69 
world would have to be totally open with their military and scientific secrets in order to 
guarantee free and open inspection, or they would be forced to develop armaments of 
increasing power and capability for self-preservation.  As principal motivation behind 
Teller?s work on the hydrogen bomb, such a philosophy also justified his opposition to 
any treaty that would force atomic testing underground, thus limiting detectable efflux 
and ensuring increased secrecy.  Those wishing to circumvent treaty stipulations would 
oppose developing any monitoring technology, ultimately rendering such detection 
systems obsolete.  ?In the contest between the bootlegger and the police, the bootlegger 
has a great advantage,? Teller wrote. 27  
Nevertheless, Teller knew that from his own experience there were ways to detect 
underground tests.  Eventually, all innovative military systems are countered; the 
countermeasure then requires further innovation to the original system or the adoption of 
a new system altogether to fulfill the operational requirements of the battlefield.  This 
philosophy also held true for a system of underground test monitoring.  If testing moved 
underground, it was more likely that the Soviets would cheat, and the fallout from their 
tests could no longer be used to assess the success of their weapons program.  To counter 
this loss, a new method was required, though in actuality the method was not new at all. 
Teller recounted in his memoirs that he was impressed by the results of the Rainier test, 
observing that: 
 
Geologists, notified in advance of the test, gained many new insights by 
tracing the shock wave produced by the explosion through the mantle of the earth.  
The instrumentation designed to register the test information in a completely new 
                                                 
 
27 George Kistiakowsky, A Scientist at the White House: The Private Diary of President 
Eisenhower?s Special Assistant for Science and Technology  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 
1976), 5-6; Gilpin, American Scientists, 102-103, 178. 
 
 70 
manner worked well.  Our questions were answered in the Rainier test ? muffling 
does occur, and underground testing can yield information about weapon design 
and about the composition of the earth.  This line of testing made possible the 
evolution of safer nuclear testing procedures.  More important, the Rainier test 
was crucial to the upcoming negotiations with the Soviets.  But by the time it was 
possible to continue testing underground, the test ban was a well-established 
popular movement.28 
 
The generosity of time ameliorates Teller?s earlier skepticism regarding 
underground nuclear testing.  The apparent contradiction between his experience with 
teleseimic monitoring (the Mike test), his comments on the Rainier test and his beliefs 
about the effectiveness of newer monitoring methods are not mutually exclusive.  Teller 
observed the Mike event because he knew when to look for it, and scientists were able to 
gather useful data from Rainier because they knew when it was going to be conducted.  
His argument was that seismology was not a useful system for observing unexpected 
events, or in discriminating between human-caused and geological phenomena.   Teller, 
Latter, Doyle Northrup of the Department of Defense, and Harold Brown from the 
University of California Radiation Laboratory became concerned with the possibility that 
the Soviets would further engage in hiding their tests, and that muffling them through a 
process known as ?decoupling? would be a primary means of doing so.  Decoupling 
became a significant issue that drove later tests to determine the extent of its effect on 
seismic signal attenuation. 
Hans Bethe opposed the Teller-Latter position and argued that decoupling would 
not pose an obstruction to underground test monitoring. Bethe believed that a future 
monitoring system could surmount any obstacles presented to it, given that it was 
carefully planned and extensively emplaced.  A strong supporter of arms control, he 
                                                 
28 Teller and Shoolery, Memoirs, 444. 
 
 71 
consistently argued that the United States had tested its arsenal to the point that further 
experiments would yield little useful new data and while generating further antagonism 
towards the United States as global opposition to atmospheric nuclear testing increased.29   
Yet decoupling remained troubling because it was theoretically easy to 
accomplish.  In a typical underground nuclear test, a shaft is bored to a predetermined 
depth and the test device inserted with various instruments designed to measure aspects 
of the detonation.  If the device was in close proximity to the walls of the shaft, it was 
said to be ?tamped.?  The shaft was then filled with material, commonly a sand and 
gravel mix, in a process called ?stemming.?  This filler trapped the expanding gases in 
the hole, ensuring that all of the energy from the blast was transmitted directly into the 
surrounding ground; it also served as an ablative plug, wherein the fill material quickly 
melted due to the tremendous heat and sealed the mechanical holes used to lay instrument 
cables.  With no leakage of gasses from the chamber created by the blast, a seismic signal 
would be generated that could give important information about weapon design and 
strength.30   
Teller argued that the Soviets wanted to avoid any sort of openness, and would 
attempt to attenuate the seismic signal.  The easiest way to do this would be to decouple 
the test in a pre-excavated chamber.  Once a large spherical chamber had been created, 
the test device could be suspended from the ceiling, or elevated on a scaffold sufficient to 
place it in the center of the chamber.  At the moment of detonation, the spherical blast 
wave expanded, then dissipated to a degree dictated by the circumference of the chamber.  
                                                 
29 Harold Karan Jacobson and Eric Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians: The United States 
and the Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 48, 73; Gilpin, 
American Scientists, 178-79. 
30 U. S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear 
Explosions, 31-34. 
 
 72 
A larger chamber would rationally under most circumstances have an increased 
attenuation effect.  Theoretically, this diminished the seismic signal at its point of origin 
because the air gap between the device and the wall of the chamber lessened the blast 
wave.  Instead of a direct coupling between the blast wave and the ground, it was 
decoupled.  The telltale motion detected by a seismograph was therefore markedly 
smaller.  In addition, there was a possibility that such a chamber could have further 
unknown effects that could fool mechanical means of test monitoring.  By 1958, no 
decoupling experiments had been conducted, and both sides of the argument were using 
theoretical calculations without the benefit of empirical data.  Teller noted in his memoirs 
that: 
 Test-ban proponents claimed that underground tests could also be detected on 
seismographs because they cause effects similar to earthquakes.  The tests could be 
distinguished from natural earthquakes by their sharply timed energy release and, of 
course, by their unusual location.  Given the nature of muffling [decoupling], I thought 
those arguments incomplete.31  
 
  
For those involved with nuclear test detection, 1958 was an eventful year.  The 
United States conducted two tests designed to examine the safety of their nuclear devices 
at the Nevada Test Site in February and March.  Less than a ton in yield, these tests, as 
well as two others detonated previously in December 1957 as part of Operation 58, were 
designed to verify the safety features of the devices to be detonated in the United States? 
largest nuclear test series to date, ?Operation Hardtack.?  The experiments would be 
divided into two subseries, Hardtack I and Hardtack II, and include seventy-two 
                                                 
31 Jacobson and Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians, 74; Teller and Shoolery, Memoirs, 
434. 
 
 73 
individual tests, ranging from ?slight? yields, to a massive 8.9mt blast at Enewetak in 
June.  Hardtack was to begin near the end of April 1958.32   
A month before the first Hardtack thermonuclear burst rose above the Pacific, the 
Soviets dropped a bombshell of their own.  They had tested fifteen devices between 
January 1 and the end of March 1958, ranging from sub-kiloton yields to 1.5mt.  At the 
conclusion of these tests, the Soviets announced a unilateral test moratorium beginning 
on March 31.  It was a canny political move, for it was timed precisely to coincide with 
the beginning of Hardtack, as Bethe noted.  Added to this was the admonition that if the 
United States did not join in the moratorium, the Soviets would feel free to resume 
testing.  With a multimillion dollar test program in the offing, there was little the United 
States could do ? it was unreasonable to cancel such a mass commitment of men and 
materiel.  Hardtack proceeded as planned, and in the end the United States looked 
militarily aggressive.  Eisenhower disregarded the Soviet moratorium, even though the 
world reacted with general approval; to him it was merely a publicity stunt, despite a 
letter from Khrushchev repeating his determination to end testing.33  
If Khrushchev?s offer had any effect, it was to underscore further that a test 
moratorium had global support, despite the nuclear powers? desire to continue testing.  
The Soviets won praise from the world community, and the Americans were left feeling 
outwitted.  Teller felt a great deal of unease for, as he put it, ?the Soviet Union had 
remained a tightly controlled, secretive, totalitarian state.  The dangers of a treaty with 
such a nation were obvious to me, and I talked almost incessantly about the topic for 
many months.?  The Soviet Union was clearly setting the diplomatic agenda, and the 
                                                 
32 Cochrane, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 157-59. 
33 Pavel Podvig, ed., Soviet Stretegic Arsenal, 490-91; Jacobson and Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, 
and Politicians, 45-46 
 
 74 
West needed to regain the initiative; the solution was in engaging scientists as allies in 
the negotiations.  The Eisenhower administration had suggested in January a 
scientifically-based conference on arms control measures.  The resulting 1958 Geneva 
Conference of Experts represented an unprecedented meeting of Eastern and Western 
scientists to discuss methods whereby their respective governments could reach political 
agreements on the immensely technical topic of arms control.34   
Meanwhile, Bethe had reported back to Eisenhower after the conclusion of the 
eponymous panel that he had chaired in order to discuss the feasibility of joining the 
Soviet moratorium and the ability to detect any violations of a test ban treaty.  
Interestingly, no seismologists were included on Bethe?s panel, nor was seismology as a 
field represented on the PSAC, although seismologists were certainly available.  These 
seem like unlikely omissions, although they may have been intentionally done as a 
political expedient, for there was no empirical data to confirm or discount any ability to 
identify nuclear tests through seismic means.  In other words, to save risking a debate 
over unknown quantities that might stall discussions, excluding seismologists from the 
panel was an easier choice.  Ultimately, the Bethe Panel suggested that the United States 
proceed with Hardtack and then work towards a moratorium agreement with the Soviet 
Union.35 
The Conference of Experts began on July 1, 1958, as the Hardtack I tests 
continued at the Pacific Test Site.  Dr. James B. Fisk, then a member of the PSAC and 
vice-president of Bell Laboratories, chaired the Western delegation, which also included 
                                                 
34 Teller and Shoolery, Memoirs, 433; Jacobson and Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians, 
48, 53. 
35 Jacobson and Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians, 47, 49. 
 
 75 
Lawrence, substituting for Teller.  Opposition to Teller stemmed from his outspoken 
nature and his work on hydrogen bomb development.36  
Their counterparts from the Eastern delegation included Soviet scientific 
luminaries.  Unbeknownst to the American delegation, however, the Soviets provided an 
expert diplomatic negotiator to support their scientists, while the Americans neglected to 
do so.  This disappointed scientists who had high hopes of reaching a momentous 
breakthrough independent of the tensions of the international diplomatic arena.  Their 
efforts did yield some results, though, in the form of the proposed ?Geneva System?: a 
land and sea-based seismic detection network designed to detect and monitor 
underground nuclear testing on a global scale and be able to discriminate between the 
vast majority of artificial and natural signals. 
The Geneva System was the logical outcome of the impetus to move testing 
underground, but it drew objections due to several inherent flaws.  First, there was the 
problem of small earthquakes and small bombs.  Seismology in the 1950s was a rapidly 
changing and growing field of research and had reached nothing like the complexity and 
sophistication it has today: the immediate detection, identification, and location of 
seismic signals was far more difficult then than now.  It was known that numerous small 
earthquakes occurred every year, and nuclear devices could be, and had been, tested with 
yields at or less than one kt.  There was the distinct possibility that an unscrupulous 
nation might be able to carry on a rewarding test program using small devices and still 
maintain secrecy from both automated and manned stations.  A 1961 congressional 
hearing into the seismic problems posed to the Geneva Conference concluded that even if 
the West received full concessions to a system of 160-180 land and sea-based stations 
                                                 
36 Ibid., 55. 
 
 76 
spread some 600 miles apart in seismically active areas, and 1,100 miles apart in non-
seismically active areas, they could certainly pick up the signal from a one kt nuclear 
device or small earthquake, but they did not have the means to discriminate between the 
two.  Added to this was the changing size and complexion of the Geneva System.  
Questions remained as to the amount of access granted to inspection teams, the degree to 
which remote monitoring stations might be tampered with, and the consequences of any 
such chicanery.37 
The Geneva System was not built.  Despite its flaws, it showed that science and 
diplomacy were able to interact to propose solutions to the arms control and testing 
problem.  The United States continued to increase its seismic network through the United 
States Geologic Survey and geology departments in colleges and universities around the 
country.  Heartened by the conference, Eisenhower and his administration announced that 
the United States would call upon the Soviet Union to join in a one-year moratorium on 
all nuclear and thermonuclear testing, beginning October 31, 1958, subject to extension 
should diplomatic efforts allow.38  
Before the testing moratorium took effect there was a flurry of further 
atmospheric testing.  The United States entered Phase II of the Hardtack series, which 
included tests of small-yield devices conducted almost exclusively at the Nevada Test 
Site.  The Soviets also resumed testing, including megaton-yield thermonuclear weapons.  
Both sides wanted to ?get their last licks in? before the moratorium.  The Soviets even 
violated the test moratorium, testing two devices in November following the start of talks 
                                                 
37 U. S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Developments in the Field of Detection 
and Identification of Nuclear Explosions (Project Vela): Hearing Before the Joint Committee on Atomic 
Energy, 87th Cong., 1st sess, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961), 6. 
38 Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, 327. 
 
 77 
between the United States and Soviet Union.  This prompted the United States and 
Britain to renounce the moratorium, but as a sign of good faith, they retained their 
commitment not to conduct tests.  The unofficial moratorium lasted until the Soviets 
resumed full-scale atmospheric testing in 1961.39 
Perhaps it was the unofficial nature of the test ban that led the Eisenhower 
administration to conclude that it would eventually resume experiments.  The political 
capital to be gained by moving tests underground was obvious, but the uncertainties 
concerning decoupling and other effects had to be addressed especially in order to quell 
some of the most ardent critics, namely Teller and his allies.  The effects of nuclear 
decoupling would not be investigated until the Project Vela series began in 1963.40  
Begun in 1959 at the behest of the 1958 President?s Panel on Seismic Improvements, 
Vela was a comprehensive program to determine the accuracy and feasibility of new 
detection systems for underground and covert high altitude and space tests.41  In a sense, 
it was an extension of the International Geophysical Year?s focus on the development of 
earth sciences, including seismology, which along with astrophysics stood to benefit the 
most from the large investment made by the Defense Advanced Research Projects 
Agency (DARPA) into Vela.  Eisenhower?s press office announced the project on May 7, 
1960:  
The President today announced approval of a major expansion of the 
present research and development directed toward an improved capability to 
detect and identify underground nuclear explosions.?Known as Project VELA, 
the program calls for increased basic research in seismology; procurement of 
instruments for a world-wide seismic research program; development of improved 
seismic instruments; construction and operation of prototype seismic detection 
                                                 
39 Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 446-47. 
40 Cochrane, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 164. 
41 U. S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Developments in the Field of Detection 
and Identification of Nuclear Explosions, 3. 
 
 78 
stations; and an experimental program of underground detonations encompassing 
both high explosive and where necessary nuclear explosions.  The planned 
program provides for investigation of all aspects of improvement that are 
considered to be feasible. 
Such nuclear explosions as are essential to a full understanding of both the 
capabilities of the presently proposed detection system and the potential for 
improvements in this system would be carried out under fully contained 
conditions and would produce no radioactive fallout.  In order to develop 
sufficient reliable data from the program, it is anticipated that it will be necessary 
to conduct a series of explosions of various sizes, in differing types of geologic 
formations.42 
 
 The announcement of this program, made during the middle of the voluntary test 
moratorium, might have made it possible to conduct the nuclear portion of the test 
program following special negotiations.  The desire for positive global opinion forced the 
United States and Soviet Union to reconsider their weapons testing programs.  While the 
test sites cooled off, the weapons laboratories continued feverishly with their work 
designing the next generation of bombs.  Each side waited for the other to end the 
moratorium so that their arsenals could resume testing.  Or at least that was how it 
appeared. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
42 James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary, announcement of Project VELA, May 7, 1960,  Attached to 
correspondence from Hollingsworth to Stennis, November 28, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 
1960-1961, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 
 79 
Chapter Four 
 
Cowboy and the Big Hole Theory  
 
 
 DARPA and the AEC had not been sitting on their hands between October 31, 
1958, and September 1, 1961, while the test moratorium was effective.  They were busily 
planning future weapons test series while exploring technical systems required for a 
detection and analytical capability to cope with the technical requirements of 
underground nuclear testing.  Several test series utilizing high explosives determined the 
seismic characteristics of various underground environments.  Authorized early in 
September 1959, Vela Uniform was publicly announced on May 7, 1960.  DARPA was 
given the task of designing and implementing a three-phase program designed to detect 
and monitor subterranean, high altitude, and surface detonations.  Decoupling gained 
enough credibility to warrant substantial field research.  Geologists were beginning to 
understand the differences in seismic energy transmission through different materials and 
that a nuclear assay of underground structures needed to be made that approximated 
zones where the Soviets would most likely conduct subterranean tests.  Two programs 
initially emerged, code-named ?Cowboy? and ?Concerto.?1 
 Cowboy directly addressed the question of decoupling and the potential 
magnitude of its effect on camouflaging a test signal.  Begun in December 1959 and 
lasting for three months, it was a non-nuclear test series utilizing high explosives.  The 
experiments provided useful data while keeping faithful to the voluntary 1958 nuclear 
test moratorium.  Begun at the end of 1958, the tests were both welcomed and resented in 
                                                 
1 William E. Ogle,  An Account of the Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing by the United States 
after the Test Moratorium 1958-1961 (Las Vegas: U. S. Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office, 
1985), 151. 
 
 80 
the nuclear weapons community, who preferred continuing atomic tests.  The work 
normally conducted at the Nevada and Pacific test sites screeched to a virtual halt once 
the two Hardtack test series concluded.  While the threat of atmospheric fallout virtually 
disappeared, the existing concern directed towards the possibility of small covert nuclear 
tests that could be masked behind seismic background noise, providing the Soviet Union 
a tactical or strategic advantage in its arsenal development.  There was another issue: the 
moratorium was voluntary, and thus subject to being broken without the international 
accountability that would come from violating a brokered treaty.  The nuclear 
establishment felt it crucial to remain in a position to resume testing when the 
moratorium eventually ended, as many felt it would.  High explosives provided an 
alternative to no testing at all and at least kept the people at the NTS working on 
something while the Pacific test site sat practically abandoned. 
 Cowboy was the first program to give solid baseline data on the difference in 
seismic energy between coupled (or tamped) shots and decoupled shots fired in a test 
chamber in a salt dome.  The tests were conducted below the working area of the Carey 
Salt Mine near Winnfield, Louisiana, utilizing 1,000-pound high explosive charges.  
Control readings taken from shaft detonations were compared with decoupled shots in 
excavated twelve-foot and thirty-foot diameter spherical chambers.  The United States 
Coast and Geodetic Survey carefully measured the explosive energy at thirteen sites 
ranging from ground zero to sixty-one miles from the shot point.  Seismic monitoring 
crews took multi frequency readings at specialized sites up to eight miles from ground 
zero.2     
                                                 
2 U. S. Department of Commerce,  Annual Report of the Director of the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1960 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1960), 37; 
 
 81 
The paired tests produced good comparative data, proving that decoupling had a 
considerable effect on signal strength.  Testifying before the Congressional Joint 
Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) in 1960, RAND Corporation scientist Dr. Albert 
Latter reported that the tamped shots fired during Cowboy yielded seismic signals that 
were 120 times stronger than the decoupled tests.  His brother Richard, also employed by 
RAND, was another primary advocate of the possibility of using decoupling to hide 
underground tests.  The Latter brothers enjoyed the support of Edward Teller, who had 
for some time anticipated Soviet chicanery.  Teller?s constant suspicion of the Soviet 
nuclear weapons complex and political/military leadership directed him to advocate the 
continuation of atmospheric testing.  The Latter brothers? theories regarding decoupling 
suggested that atomic tests with a useful yield could be hidden.  Albert Latter?s testimony 
at the JCAE hearing led to his being credited with the ?Latter big hole? theory.  As he 
explained, 
 
(I)f the explosion occurs in a small hole ? as is the case for a tamped 
explosion ? the pressure which acts on the surrounding medium is very great, and 
the medium is not strong enough to stand the pressure.  As a result, the hole must 
expand and this causes a large motion of the surrounding earth.  It is this large 
motion, in the immediate neighborhood of the explosion which shows up at great 
distances as a tiny seismic signal?.On the other hand, if the explosion is made in 
a big hole, the pressure which the surrounding medium experiences is not very 
great and the medium can stand the pressure.  As a result, there is very little 
expansion of the hole and essentially no motion of the surrounding earth.3   
  
                                                                                                                                                 
Ogle, An Account of the Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing, 151; U. S. Congress, Hearings Before the 
Special Subcommittee on Radiation and the Subcommittee on Research and Development of the Joint 
Committee on Atomic Energy Congress of the United States, 86th Cong., 2nd  sess. (Washington, DC: 
Government Printing Office, 1960),129.  
3 U. S. Congress, Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation, 125, 129. 
 
 82 
Latter also emphasized that it was not enough simply to excavate randomly-sized 
chambers to serve as covert test sites.  There was an optimal volume to any chamber in 
relation to the device yield ? to go beyond it could risk long-distance detection:  
  
? I want to mention a rather curious fact; namely that once a hole is big 
enough, the signal will not be further reduced by making the hole any 
bigger?.Once it reaches the critica l size, this happens because of an accidental 
cancellation of two opposing physical effects.  One of these is that as the hole gets 
bigger, less energy goes into the earth?s motion.  This, of course, has a tendency 
to reduce the signal.  On the other hand, it turns out that the energy which does go 
into the seismic wave is of a longer wavelength.  As the hole gets bigger the 
wavelength increases.  This longer wavelength is just the kind of a signal which 
can be propagated to great distances in the earth easily.  The shorter wavelength 
signals tend to get filtered out by the earth.  The net effect of these two opposite 
phenomena is that the seismic signal which occurs at a great distance from the 
scene of the explosion is independent of the size of the hole ? provided the hole is 
big enough in the first place.?    
 
Latter believed that a decoupling factor of 300 could be achieved if the size of the 
test chamber was large enough.  According to his calculations, a spherical chamber 
excavated to the dimensions dictated by a factor of 70,000 cubic meters per expected 
kiloton of device yield could achieve this maximum decoupling effect.4 
The problem with this data was that it was practically applicable only to high 
explosives; nuclear devices were entirely another matter.   It is difficult to compare 
nuclear detonations and those caused by high explosives.  When nuclear charges are 
measured, it is in terms of tons of TNT (tri-nitro-toluene).  Yet TNT comparatively 
?burns? much cooler and slower than a fissile mass.  Also, high explosives do not 
produce the flood of X-rays, gamma radiation, and other exotic progeny that stem from 
nuclear fission and fusion.  These various forms of electromagnetic energy posed 
                                                 
4 Ibid., 129. 
 
 
 83 
unknown effects on the walls of a test chamber; the uncertainties were numerous enough 
to push for atomic testing in a salt environment as soon as possible once the moratorium 
was broken.  Although it is the author?s speculation, among the main areas of concern 
would have been the possibility of initial ablation of the cavity walls caused by the X-ray 
pulse from the detonation.  Ionized plasma formed by X-rays striking the sodium chloride 
walls would move rapidly inwards towards the shot point just before the blast wave 
reached it.  What effect, if any, this could have on the seismic signal was unknown.  Until 
the moratorium ceased to be in effect, this and other questions would remain unanswered.   
 Concerto?s area of investigation was different.  This test series was to discern the 
seismic signals created by the detonation of low-yield (1/4kt to 5kt) devices in tuff (a 
relatively loose volcanic soil) at varying depths, as well as one low-yield shot that was to 
be conducted off NTS property, and one medium-sized detonation of 50kt, again fired in 
tuff.  Of the seven proposed tests to be fired during Concerto, six were to be nuclear tests 
with one of the 1kt tests to be fired comparatively with a 1kt high explosive shot to gauge 
seismic effects between the two.  Unfortunately for the scientists at Livermore Radiation 
Laboratory (LRL), who were to oversee the project, the moratorium proved to be too 
politically tenuous for them to proceed with anything but the high explosive shot, and 
preparatory excavation for a tamped underground 5kt nuclear shot code-named 
?Lollipop,? which would be fired in a granite formation at NTS.5 
 The moratorium was not the only thing that retarded the Concerto series.  The 
atomic testing budget for the Fiscal Year 1960 was $4,500,000.  Between the Cowboy 
tests and the single Lollipop shot preparations, well over half this amount had been 
committed.  Because of budgetary limitations, Teller recommended to army General 
                                                 
5 Ogle, An Account of the Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing, 151, 156. 
 
 84 
Alfred Starbird, director of the Division of Military Application (DMA), AEC, revision 
of a safety formula that dictated the minimum depth of test shafts.  Starbird was amenable 
to reduced cost, but warned Teller that radiation containment was of paramount 
importance to any test series.  Whatever radioactive contamination was produced had to 
be contained underground.6  Despite the important role that nuclear testing occupied, it 
was still subject to a narrowing budget, and fiscal concerns continued to affect the 
configuration and process of atomic testing following the test moratorium?s end.   Any 
radiation release, even at the tightly-controlled Nevada Test Site, would most certainly 
result in negative publicity.   
Assurances from military and technical spokesmen following lapses of 
containment no longer assumed the same credibility as they had earlier in the atomic age.  
The 1951 irradiation of St. George, Utah, was handled through official information and 
radio bulletins; indeed it appears that contamination in the town was light.  The incident 
was considered so well-handled that a short film produced afterwards depicted the town?s 
Rockwellian citizenry reacting promptly to alerts from official government sources and 
happily enduring the situation in the cause of a safer, more secure (and more radioactive) 
America.  Yet the nature of fallout is such that it does not return to earth in a uniform 
pattern; it is sporadic, with some areas receiving a light dusting while other spots close by 
may be subjected to concentrations of material that is lethal to humans and other animals.  
Radioactivity posed an important health hazard to the public, who became increasingly 
conscious of the threat, and prepared to weather a rain of highly dangerous fallout 
following what many saw as the inevitable conflict between the Soviet Union and the 
United States.  The decision to shave the safety margin later led to some of the large on-
                                                 
6 Ibid,, 95, 156. 
 
 85 
site releases at NTS, including the Baneberry event in 1970, wherein a subterranean 10kt 
shot in tuff released a large quantity of fallout through a previously unknown fault.  
Baneberry?s fallout traveled as far north as Canada, and public furor caused all testing 
activities to be suspended for seven months.7   
Outrage and protest were one thing, the accidental irradiation of heavily populated 
areas was another.  Should continental testing be moved offsite, it would be heavily 
constrained by population, possibly eliminating certain geological environments that 
were desirable for testing.  Radiochemical containment had to be absolute, with no undue 
risk to those living in proximity to the test site.  The overlying strata that were the 
primary shields against biological effects from testing had to maintain absolute integrity.  
Concerto would explore the capabilities possessed by different types of geologic material 
and their relative abilities to absorb the immense and sudden strain caused by a nuclear 
test, as well as their readiness to transmit seismic energy. 
While Concerto was in its planning stage, another important program was pursued 
with increased vigor.  The ?Plowshare? program was an ambitious idea designed to put a 
useful face on atomic explosives.  Ultimately totaling twenty-seven tests compared to 
VU?s seven shots, Plowshare was publicly touted as a program dedicated to investigating 
the use of atomic devices for peaceful purposes.  These included the stimulation of 
underground gas deposits, the excavation of canals and harbors and other large-scale 
earth-moving projects, isotope manufacture, subterranean storage chamber creation, and 
heat production.  Plowshare, which took its name from a scriptural verse instructing 
people to turn their swords into plowshares, was always a sticking point in arms control 
negotiations between the United States and Soviet Union, the devices to be used were not 
                                                 
7 Office of Technology Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions, 32-33. 
 
 86 
bombs ? that is, they were not weaponized or militarized and did not incorporate such 
elements as a ballistic case or fuzing.  As they were intended to be the nuclear equivalent 
of high explosives, the AEC made every effort to limit the amount of radioactive 
contamination caused by their detonation.  Small, low-yield thermonuclear devices 
looked to be especially useful as they produced little radioactivity, with most of this 
coming primarily from the small atomic device used to spark the thermonuclear reaction.  
In this area, Plowshare sparked no small concern, for cloaked within the guise of a 
peaceful atomic program lay the need to develop these smaller, ?cleaner? devices ? a 
capability that potentially tied it to weapons development.  Plowshare and VU were 
similar and different.  Plowshare turned the military atom towards peaceful civilian 
purposes.  Vela Uniform turned the military atom towards itself, ensuring continued 
peace through monitoring and detection methods.  Nevertheless, they were commonly 
confused with each other.8   
 Enhancing this confusion, the first Plowshare test, ?Gnome,? was conducted 
during the first American test series following the end of the 1958 test moratorium.  
Lasting more than thirty months, the moratorium had been a period of uneasy peace 
between the superpowers without the frightful nuclear saber-rattling.  In 1961, the Soviet 
Union broke the moratorium and resumed atmospheric testing.  The experiments included 
the largest explosion in human history, a roughly 60mt blast over their test site at Novaya 
Zemlya.  While American politicians and the world community railed against the 
resumption of testing on grounds of opposing added radioactive fallout and military 
                                                 
8 Jacobson and Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians, 35-36. For further information on 
Project Plowshare?s nuclear earthmoving program, see Scott Kirsch, Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare 
and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005). 
 
 87 
destabilization, America?s nuclear community got the green light to proceed with its own 
testing.9 
 The 1957 Rainier blast had shown that tests could be conducted underground with 
little or no surface disturbance or release of radioactivity while still providing useful data 
on the effects of the explosion.  Gnome marked the first time that a nuclear device was 
tested in a subterranean salt bed, in this case near Carlsbad, New Mexico.  The AEC 
sought to explore further the feasibility of constructing underground storage chambers, 
the production of useful heat energy for electrical generation, and the production of 
radioisotopes.  Seismic monitoring stations included seismographs emplaced in Carlsbad 
Caverns and in a neighboring potash mine.  The selection of the site was intended to 
allow the collection of data in a different medium from the volcanic tuff common at the 
NTS.10   
  The Gnome shot fired on December 10, 1961.  Apart from the failure of some of 
the site equipment designed to prevent an accidental radiation release, little 
contamination was evident.  The seismic damping that occurred due to the loose 
composition of tuff was absent in the salt bed.  With little air space between it and the 
tunnel wall, the shot was tamped.  The 3kt of force generated by the device traveled 
directly into the wall of the chamber.  Monitoring personnel observed several interesting 
phenomena: first, the seismic travel times were not the same at stations located 
equidistant from the shot point, varying in delay times up to 9 seconds.  This indicated 
                                                 
9 Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 498; Gilpin, American Scientists and Nuclear 
Weapons Policy, 253-56; Jacobson and Stein, Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians, 280-82, 344. 
10 D. S. Carder, W. K. Cloud, W. V. Mickey, J. N. Jordan, and D. W. Gordon, U. S. Atomic 
Energy Commission Plowshare Program: Project GNOME Carlsbad, New Mexico December 10, 1961 
Final Report; Seismic Waves from an Underground Explosion in a Salt Bed. PNE-150-F (Washington DC: 
Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1962), 3,7. 
 
 88 
that previously unknown subterranean structures existed in the area and they had altered 
the travel time of the shock wave.  Second, although no notable damage to nearby 
commercial or residential structures occurred, the shot had a substantially stronger signal 
than shot ?Logan,? a 5kt device detonated a little more than three years before at NTS.  
This was directly attributed to the unique characteristics of the in Nevada.  Logan?s 
seismic signal was comparable to a magnitude 4.5 earthquake while Gnome?s signal was 
closer to a 4.6 to 5.0.11  
 Pointing the way to Vela, the report on Gnome?s seismic program concluded: ?it 
is recommended therefore that some consideration be given to conducting a future test in 
a shield area with the shot buried deep enough to be well coupled with the rock, and that 
the international seismological community be fully alerted.  This would afford seismic 
measurements along continuous profiles in any direction, and afford a reverse profile for 
evaluation of clandestine events.?12  In short, naturally-occurring sources of signal 
attenuation were poorly understood.  Interactions between geological formations directed 
and changed the strength of seismic energy, and could delay it as well.  Understanding 
the manner of how shock energy passed through these structures was critical if any future 
seismic detection system was to work with a reliable degree of accuracy.  
 Nuclear tests were perfect for determining the composition and location of 
subterranean structures, because they produced a sharply-timed spike of energy and their 
detonation time, depth, and location were all known.  They allowed the subterranean 
contours of the earth?s crust to be precisely mapped.  For the Plowshare and Vela series, 
                                                 
11 Carder, et al., U. S. Atomic Energy Commission Plowshare Program: Project GNOME, 35-38; 
Cochran, et. al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 159. 
12 Carder, et al., U. S. Atomic Energy Commission Plowshare Program: Project GNOME, 38. 
 
 89 
the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (USCGS), provided the seismographs, and 
the AEC provided the nuclear charges.13   
 Gnome?s revelation that salt was far more efficient at conducting seismic energy 
led to further interest in testing in salt environments.  It is a crystalline substance, and in 
some respects salt is similar to media like granite in that it has a degree of a quality called 
?plasticity.?  Salt has the ability to flex or flow in response to dynamic heat and pressure.  
It is also much easier to excavate than granite or other rocks and therefore makes an ideal 
matrix for a test site.  Methods practiced and perfected over hundreds of years of salt 
mining could easily be employed to create test locations.  Testifying at the 1960 JCAE 
hearing, Lance P. Meade, manager of Phillips Petroleum?s engineering department, 
offered several examples of storage chambers that had been mined in salt domes.  At the 
time of his testimony, some 250 had been created, primarily for liquefied petroleum gas 
storage.  These ranged from 140,000 cubic feet (4,000 cubic meters) to 5,600,000 cubic 
feet (160,000 cubic meters).  Meade proposed mining a spherical 73 million-cubic-foot 
volume chamber approximately 516 feet in diameter ? theoretically sufficient to decouple 
a 30kt explosion.  The diameter and shape thus specified, the only question left was the 
expense of an excavation 13 times larger then any previous chambers.  Meade provided 
two examples regarding the cost of excavation: one where the primary concern was 
expense and the other where time was the critical factor.  The expense-critical (cheap) 
approach would last some forty-eight months and cost about $2,580,000 with a possible 
$500,000 to $1,000,000 in additional costs relating to site purchase and preparation, fresh 
                                                 
13 Bruce Bolt, Nuclear Explosions and Earthquakes: The Parted Veil (San Francisco: W.H. 
Freeman and Co., 1976), 231-33. 
 
 90 
water and brine disposal, and various other items.  The time-critical (expensive) approach 
could be completed in twenty-eight months with a cost of $13,505,000.14 
More questions needed to be answered regarding nuclear testing in a salt 
environment, especially concerning the types of residual materials created by the extreme 
heat and pressure of an atomic blast, and the feasibility of reusing such chambers for 
future tests.  There were a limited number of sites that could host a large nuclear test in a 
salt dome in the high kiloton or megaton range.  These sites would quickly be depleted in 
the course of a testing program if the plasticity of the salt could not tolerate the 
deformation and damage caused by a large nuclear blast.    
 By 1961, Project Clarion had been subsumed by the VU program.  The two 
projects? goals were certainly similar, although the Vela program included a far greater 
number of chemical and atomic shots than Clarion.  Lollipop, the granite shot, was never 
fired, at least not under that name.  Instead, a test conducted on February 15, 1962, during 
Operation ?Nougat,? named ?Hard Hat? was fired nearly 950 feet below ground at NTS 
in a ?hard rock? structure.  The 5.7kt yield and environmental similarity leads to the 
conclusion that it was the same test, renamed and included in a different test series.15   
Re-designation was not unusual for test shots, test sites, and programs.  The salt 
dome portion of the VU program was called ?Ripple? during the survey phase and later 
changed to ?Dribble? for the operational phase.16  Six criteria were crucial to Ripple: the 
salt had to be pure and free of any rock intrusions or ledges; the top of the salt had to be 
                                                 
14 U. S. Congress, Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation, 155-57. 
15 Cochran, et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 160.   
16 The nomenclature regarding the Dribble test series even remained ambiguous in government 
documents and the program was occasionally referred to as Ripple.  Project Dribble began as Ripple, and it 
is likely that cold war security habits led to the change in the name although it was not a secret program.  In 
this work, Dribble has multiple uses, and refers to the atomic test program conducted in Mississippi as well 
as the test site itself.  It does not refer to any particular test. 
 
 91 
less than 1,700 feet down; the population around the site had to be as minimal as 
possible, and within two miles of the site it had to be less than one hundred; within two 
miles of the test site there could be no ?significant oil, gas, sulfur, salt, or other mineral 
production?; there could be ?no town within five to ten miles of the site?; and initially 
there had to be ?firm ground? for instrumentation purposes within thirty miles ? later 
thirty kilometers ? of the site at forty-five to sixty-degree radial intervals.  In addition, if a 
leaching method was used to excavate the chamber, fifteen million barrels of water 
needed to be available ?at a reasonable cost,? and there had to be ?an appropriate, 
economical method of disposing of the approximately fifteen million barrels of wash 
water during the approximately six months required to form the desired cavity.?17       
 More than 200 sites looked promising for the salt dome shots, ranging from Texas 
to Mississippi.  After further analysis, two Mississippi salt formations looked the most 
promising: the Bruinsburg Dome, some thirty miles south of Vicksburg, and the Tatum 
Dome.  The ready availability of transportation by road, railroad, and air was a major 
advantage of the Tatum site, as was the absence of having to worry about potential effects 
on Mississippi River traffic.  The general characteristics of both domes were well known, 
and deep sampling cores retrieved from them allowed further tests regarding their 
suitability.  At the Tatum site, exploratory 2,700-foot-deep wells penetrated into the 
dome to determine the chemical and physical composition of the caprock and salt stock.18   
When Frank Tatum wrote his elected representatives during the latter half of 
October 1960, and reported the AEC?s desire to ?do some atomic shooting in the salt 
                                                 
17 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Re-Evaluation of Salt Domes for Project Dribble, 
Particularly the Hockley Dome (Albuquerque: Nevada Operations Office, 1964), 9.  NTA accession no. 
NV0338573.  
18 Hattiesburg American, Mar. 4, 1961. 
 
 92 
dome,? he was disturbed that the dome in question was located in the middle of his 
family?s extensive landholdings.  A shrewd businessman like his father, Frank Tatum 
made an offer to the Corps of Engineers: he could agree to an open lease on the land with 
unlimited extension if needed, ?with the proviso that they would pay an annual rental of 
at least equal to what we were getting from the land each year in turpentine rights and 
sale of the trees.  They would not agree to a lease.?  Tatum attempted another bargain, 
offering to trade for an equal amount of nearby government land.  This was denied, he 
being told that the piece of federal land in question belonged to different bureaus and 
could not be exchanged.19 
This letter is misleading, for it portrays Tatum as a victim of federal action.  He 
neglected to mention that a month and a half before he began his correspondence with 
Governor Barnett, Senators Eastland and Stennis, and Representative Colmer, the 
Hattiesburg American reported the possibility that Mississippi?s salt domes might be 
used for atomic testing, and an editorial published on September 15 further detailed the 
scientific interest in the state?s salt domes and the overwhelmingly cooperative attitude of 
the state?s citizenry.  The first media report mentioning government interest in a local salt 
dome appeared on October 7, and six days later, Tatum was named as a member of a ten-
man committee to advise Mississippi state officials on issues concerning the possible test 
program.  He was better prepared to look out for his interests than he would admit.20 
Of particular interest is a Hattiesburg American article published on September 
12, 1960, which coupled the idea of using nuclear devices in salt domes to ?produce 
valuable radioactive materials and energy that would be useful for industrial purposes? to 
                                                 
19 Tatum to Eastland, Stennis, and Colmer, Oct. 28, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 1960-
1961, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.  
20 Hattiesburg American, Sept. 12, 15, Oct. 7, 13, 1960. 
 
 93 
the excavation of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway project.  The Tennessee-
Tombigbee (commonly referred to as the Tenn-Tom) was to join the two river systems 
across northeastern Mississippi and northwest Alabama, create a water route to the Gulf 
of Mexico independent of the Mississippi River, and act as a major economic stimulus to 
the southeastern United States.  The large canal that had to be excavated to link the two 
rivers had to cut through stone ridges, where conventional blasting and rock removal was 
the primary expense of the project.  The Tenn-Tom seemed an ideal proving ground for 
Plowshare, where several nuclear small devices could open the necessary passage in the 
rock with a modicum of radioactivity.  Ultimately, the waterway was constructed, but 
without the use of Plowshare explosives.  There was no mention of Vela Uniform in the 
article.21  Linking the two projects, plus the idea of isotope creation and industrial uses of 
atomic shots in salt domes further increased confusion about the programs.        
 As of October 1960, no firm decision was made to acquire the property over the 
Tatum Dome or the minerals within it.  Tatum was determined to avoid being taken 
advantage of by the federal government and was primarily interested in seeing how the 
situation could be turned to his personal benefit.  The Atomic Energy Commission sent 
representatives on October 29, 1960, to brief Tatum fully on the plans for the Ripple tests 
as then conceived, and the need to assess the Tatum Dome for suitability as a test site as 
compared with the Bruinsburg Dome:  
 
If the Tatum site is finally selected for these experiments it is expected 
that it will be necessary to acquire approximately 1400 acres.  Whether this area 
will have to be purchased or whether a lesser interest, an easement or a leasehold, 
will be sufficient has not been finally determined.  However, every effort will be 
made to interfere as little as possible with the use of the surface by the present 
owners.  Because it is anticipated that dome salt in the immediate vicinity of the 
                                                 
21 Ibid., Sept. 12. 
 
 94 
detonation area will be made unsuitable for further utilization due to the effects of 
the nuclear explosion, we would plan still to purchase the mineral rights 
underlying the approximately 1400 acres discussed above.22   
 
This mention of buying the mineral rights in the salt dome would later become an 
important point of contention. 
 On October 31, 1960, Tatum wrote to Governor Ross Barnett, still in the first year 
of his administration:  
 
With further regard to the Atomic Energy Commission?s program in South 
Mississippi on the salt domes, as you know South Mississippi is blessed with 
many creeks, streams, branches and springs, and practically all of our people have 
artesian water available.  The question naturally arises as to the contamination and 
pollution that our streams and water resources may suffer. 
We have to take into consideration not only contamination but the effect 
or force of the explosion and then the terrific heat.  These atomic explosions seem 
to have a chained reaction (sic) and I do not believe anyone knows what the result 
might be. 
I am informed by the Humble Oil & Refining Company, one of our largest 
producers of crude oil in Mississippi, who have interest in many of the oil fields, 
especially in South Mississippi, that there is a large salt dome located on 
government property in the New Augusta area and on the Camp Shelby property.  
This dome is farther away from the oil and gas production, is already owned by 
the government, and has been for many years, and it seems to me should be 
available to the government if they need it.  Humble states that the salt dome now 
owned by the government under their property is about the same size and 
conformity and depth as the one they are looking at in Lamar County and they 
think, from looking at their structural maps and seismograph information, that it is 
equally as well located structurally and probably about the same depth. 
I am sure that we will immediately find our government, through its Forest 
Service, demanding that the Atomic Energy Commission get their land elsewhere 
and not interfere with the Forest Service?s program, etc.  As a citizen, I think they 
should use what they already have.23   
  
                                                 
22AEC Chairman Hollingsworth to Stennis, Nov. 28, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 1960-
1961, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.   
23 Tatum to Barnett, Oct. 31, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-1 1960, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  Perhaps most noteworthy is the environmentalist argument, predating Rachel Carson?s book, 
Silent Spring by two years. 
 
 95 
Tatum found an important ally in Frederick W. Mellen, one of the most eminent 
geologists in Mississippi, who discovered the Tinsley oilfield, one of the state?s most 
productive, in 1939.  Mellen had cultivated a reputation for honesty and integrity, which 
eventually led him to be appointed state geologist in 1962.  He later resigned that position 
in 1965 due to his disgust with colleagues who illegally diverted government funds for 
their own purposes and attempted to pressure him to engage in the same activity. 
Following his resignation, he returned to the consulting business.24  Mellen was deeply 
opposed to the idea of nuclear testing in Mississippi from the beginning, arguing that the 
potential for destruction of the state?s natural resources was too great a risk to take.  
Following a presentation that was given by Dr. Andrew D. Suttle Jr., director of the 
newly created Mississippi Industrial and Technological Research Committee (MITRC), 
to the Oil Company Geophysicists Association, Mellen wrote a letter to Senator Stennis, 
dated November 22, 1961, criticizing Suttle and the AEC, and requested Stennis?s 
intercession:  
 
I wrote you sometime ago, sending you a copy of a letter which appeared 
in one of the local papers opposing the underground nuclear testing in 
Mississippi.  I am still just as opposed to it as I was at that time, although my 
reasons may have changed somewhat.  I understand that you have given your tacit 
approval of the program, as contemplated by the Atomic Energy Commission and 
the Mississippi Industrial and Technical Research Board?.Dr. Suttle did not give 
one definite assurance of any economic benefit of these explosions to the State 
except for the pump-priming effect of spending Government money in a local 
area. 
The most alarming thing to me is the coercive threat of Federal authority 
vested in the Atomic Energy Act and the fact that Dr. Suttle views these salt 
domes as more or less useless appendages to the mineral economy of the State.  
?. Dr. Suttle led us to believe that not one, but many explosions were in 
contemplation; that not one, but some indefinite number of salt domes would be 
used by the Government?.  
                                                 
24Alan Cockrell, Drilling Ahead: The Quest for Oil in the Deep South, 1945-2005 (Jackson: 
University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 101-102, 273. 
 
 96 
It is with deep regard and concern that I find myself in the position of 
having to sit back and watch the destruction of our native State by a Socialistic 
Government.  I know that it is a matter of concern to you, as it is to every thinking 
Mississippian, and I sincerely trust that you will continue to look into this matter 
at every opportunity and help us to kill this snake before it destroys us.25 
 
Mellen?s ?Statement of Personal Opinion,? widely distributed via the editorial 
pages of the state?s papers, raised concern in the AEC?s public information office, which 
was unsure of Mellen?s motives, and suspected that his actions were a result of 
professional animosity.  The Mississippi Academy of Science, of which Mellen was a 
member, had not been consulted during the early planning of the Dribble test series.  
Spite or not, Mellen?s name and reputation carried a great deal of weight in Mississippi, 
and the last thing that the AEC, MITRC, and its director Dr. Andrew Suttle needed was 
negative publicity.26 
Yet, despite the drumbeat of criticism emanating from Tatum and Mellen?s 
typewriters, Suttle?s MITRC had a powerful ally in the man who first proposed it, 
Governor Barnett, and the contracting firms in Mississippi, who hoped to benefit from its 
creation.  MITRC, spiritual descendant of the earlier BAWI program, intended to bring 
high-tech industry into the Piney Woods.   
                                                 
25 Mellen to Stennis, Nov. 22, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-1 1960, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  His misidentification of the MITRC as the ?Board? is not explained.  
26 Memo, James Cannon, Office of Public Information, USAEC, to George Dennis, Office of 
Information, Albuquerque Operations Office (ALOO), April. 25, 1961, United States Department of 
Energy Nuclear Testing Archive (hereafter cited as NTA), accession no. NV018673. 
 
 97 
Chapter Five 
 
MITRC, MCEC, and the Tatum Decision 
 
 
Frederick Mellen?s efforts to stop the tests in Mississippi involved criticizing one 
of the state?s newest administrative entities.  The Mississippi Industrial and 
Technological Research Committee originated in 1960 in response to newly elected 
Governor Ross Barnett?s inaugural address.  Barnett reaffirmed his commitment to 
segregation, a legacy of the state?s racist past.  Yet for the future he saw himself in a 
unique position in Mississippi history, and advocated the introduction of high technology 
for his state.  Noting ?the urgency for this administration to direct its every effort toward 
raising the living standard of all our people,? Barnett recommended the creation of a 
?Mississippi industrial and technological research center? in addition to programs 
designed to increase tourism, attract industry, and improve education.  This initiative was 
similar in some respects to Governor White?s earlier BAWI program except that it would 
not merely focus on the attraction of heavy industry to accompany agricultural 
development; instead, it would attempt to draw scientific and technological research to 
the state.  Electronic, chemical, and nuclear industries were aggressively pursued.  
Barnett envisioned a large research park administered by highly qualified professionals ? 
not politicians ? as the anchor of this endeavor.  This concentration on industrial and 
scientific expertise versus political appointees was remarkable for its ambition, especially 
in a Deep South state.  To overcome the poverty and violence in the state?s Delta region, 
and to spur development in other parts of the state, Barnett sought to attract high-tech 
industry.  The legislature was willing to comply, and MITRC was established shortly 
 
 98 
after Barnett?s inauguration.1 
Such an organization required the stewardship of a gifted administrator.  Despite 
Mellen?s misgivings, Dr. Andrew D. Suttle, named first director of MITRC, proved to be 
an inspired choice.  A Mississippi native, having been born in West Point in 1926, Suttle 
attended school in Starkville, where he later obtained a bachelor?s degree from 
Mississippi State University, majoring in chemistry and mathematics with a minor field 
concentration in physics.  Following his service in the Naval Reserve during the last two 
years of World War II as an aviation radio technician, he returned to work as a research 
assistant at Mississippi State?s chemistry laboratories before he received an AEC 
fellowship at the University of Chicago in 1949.  He earned his doctorate there in 1952, 
concentrating most of his attention on radiochemistry, and shortly thereafter worked for 
the Humble Oil Company.  He continued as Humble?s senior research scientist while 
serving as MITRC director.  Suttle energetically promoted MITRC and wrote numerous 
reports for the state?s industries.2 
Tatum and Mellen?s letters to government representatives complemented each 
other. Mellen feared the devaluation of Mississippi?s salt domes to worthless sites for 
testing nuclear devices; these concerns reprised roughly a decade and a half later.  His 
main assertion was that despite the depth of the Tatum salt (and that of the Bruinsburg 
Dome as well), they represented the top of a slippery slope.  Once Mississippi?s domes 
were judged disposable, the state would simply become another test site, dependent 
primarily on the federal dole, and unable to support itself through its own mineral and 
resource wealth, except by selling its salt domes as radioactive dump sites.  Despite the 
                                                 
1 Hattiesburg American, Jan. 19, 1960. 
2 Ibid., Dec. 1, 1960; Texas A&M News, University Information from Britt Martin VI 6-4919, 
undated, Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. 
 
 99 
potential benefit to the world situation by stabilizing the nuclear balance of power, 
Mellen was highly suspicious of the AEC?s interest in the region, and continued to 
protest the use of any of Mississippi?s salt domes for atomic tests.  
Mellen was in contact with Dr. Linus Pauling, a well-known scientist and 
opponent of nuclear testing, who feared that the proposed Vela program might harbor 
more sinister intentions.  In a December 20, 1960, letter to Mellen, Pauling wrote:  
 
I agree with you that much of the destruction of our natural resources that 
is now going on is unwarranted.  In particular, I too am strongly opposed to the 
use of Mississippi salt domes for detonation of nuclear explosions. 
Our military men may want to use even the peace-time experiments for 
tests of nuclear weapons, and I think that the only way to be sure that a misuse of 
the nuclear explosives is not being carried out is to have all peace-time 
applications of nuclear explosives in the hands of the United Nations.  Also, I feel 
that very careful thought must be given to any proposed peace-time use of nuclear 
explosives, because I fear that the radioactivity will damage human beings so 
greatly and will damage our natural resources also to such a great extent that the 
explosions cannot be considered justified.   
I am pleased that you are active in your work along these lines, and I hope 
that you will continue.3 
 
Tatum also expressed concern regarding environmental effects.  In a letter to 
Eastland, Stennis, and Colmer, he spoke of Mississippi?s environmental value as 
compared to the desert southwest: ?This letter is not written necessarily as a property 
owner but as a Citizen of Mississippi.  South Mississippi enjoys many water resources in 
its creeks, branches, springs, and artesian wells, many grasses, plants, and growing trees, 
both pine and hardwood.  We have vast sections in the United States that are deserts and 
are covered by lava rock in the western states, no water, no grasses, no trees.  I have seen 
a great deal of these lands in two trips west and seemingly all they produce, outside of the 
                                                 
3 Pauling to Mellen, Dec. 20, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-3 1961, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
 
 100 
enormous amount of lava rock, is rattlesnakes, frogs, and lizards.?4  At times, he feared 
that the test program that was being considered for his salt dome would ultimately be 
used for more nefarious purposes than ?military men? merely co-opting peacetime tests 
to develop weapons.  Writing to Senator Eastland on Nov. 9, 1960, he stated his concern:  
 
The Atomic Energy folks tell us the project now contemplated is what 
they call Project Vela, that it is a project for the United Nations Commission.  The 
A.E.C. is undertaking this project to settle the question raised by the United 
Nations Commission who have been studying the ban of nuclear explosions and 
the detection of such explosions.  The United Nations Commission has raised the 
question as to whether it is possible to set off underground nuclear explosions so 
they cannot be detected by our enemies or others?.They think by shooting off the 
explosions in the salt domes that the salt will so distort the shock waves that you 
could not tell whether it was an atomic explosion or an earthquake; that the salt 
mass will distort the waves of tremor and cause a different type of chart recording 
or a different type of wiggle or waggle?.  
I am not ready for a one-world government and, personally, I would like 
to see United Nations put on a distant island and all Russians and Communists 
deported.  I think this Nation could well stand on its own feet and tell the others to 
support themselves.  I have never had fear of outside invasion, but I feel we will 
have rot from within.   
 
Concluding his letter, Tatum added: ?with best regards and congratulations on another 
term.  We are certainly going to need you with Kennedy elected.?5   
The Kennedy administration had few white supporters in Mississippi.  Tatum was 
definitely not a fan of John F. Kennedy, who along with his brother Robert, the attorney 
general, was the focus of his anger regarding the racial conflict that took place in 
Mississippi.  Tatum certainly supported the idea, if not the fact, of maintaining 
segregation as a means of maintaining social status.  A June 27, 1961, letter to Barnett 
                                                 
4 Tatum to Eastland, Stennis, and Colmer, Oct. 28, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 1960, 
Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.      
5 Tatum to Eastland, Nov. 9, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-1 1960, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC. Emphasis in document. 
 
 101 
and Tatum?s congressional representatives illustrates his sentiments of states? rights and 
white supremacy:  
It seems that the Kennedy brothers have gotten together with the NAACP 
and similar organizations and issued new orders and directives regarding the 
letting of government contracts?.  
As you remember, you invited the AEC to Mississippi.  We agreed for 
them to work on our land as a matter of patriotism and not otherwise, as we do not 
believe they will accomplish any good for the State, except a waste of taxpayers? 
money.  I believe, however, if we are going to go through this sort of thing we 
should see that the money is spent under Mississippi law, and not under Mr. 
Kennedy?s law or Supreme Court law. 
We are having enough trouble regarding the Negro invasion now, and 
probably we are going to have the same sort of troublemakers invade the State by 
the thousands coming from the West coast, New York, Chicago, etc., and 
eventually we may have to meet them at the State line.  We don?t need further to 
be bringing into Mississippi organizations who will agree to these government 
demands, to get the government money and contracts.  It?s a good time to call a 
halt to the whole thing and let them know that you, as the head of the State of 
Mississippi, are not going to put up with it?.  
As a private citizen, my position would be until we get rid of the Kennedy 
brothers, no government money for any purpose.  I wouldn?t want their projects 
and I would get them out of the State if I could.  Untold harm is already being 
done to our way of life by government installations such as Keesler Field, where 
they [black and white servicemen] sleep and eat together.6   
 
Despite his avowed opposition to the test program as a loyal American resisting 
UN pressure and the whims of scientific excess, Tatum wrote another letter on November 
11, 1961, to Barnett, Stennis, Eastland, and Representative William M. Colmer making a 
case that had little to do with the environment, the threat of an internationalist 
government, or miscegenation. Now the issue was money:   
The Atomic Energy Commission, I believe, now agrees with us that they 
can lease the land on a ten year lease, year-to-year basis.  However, they still 
think they will have to have possession of the salt mass.  When you think of a 
huge mass standing 40,000 to 50,000 feet high and more than a mile in diameter, 
you are thinking about twenty to thirty cubic miles of salt, billions or trillions of 
                                                 
6 Tatum to Barnett, Eastland, Stennis, Colmer and Williams, June 27, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt 
Dome T-4 1961, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
 
 
 102 
tons all of which may be useful to us as property owners, as storage basins, for the 
extraction of salt and for industrial purposes. 
We see no reason why the government could not also lease the salt mass 
for the period of time necessary, paying thereon a lease rental and royalty for the 
salt removed (1/8th of the value of whatever it may be).  If the AEC and Dr. Suttle 
know what they are talking about, only a small portion of this mass will be used 
or contaminated by the project?.  
Our family has spent more time, money and energy in the conservation of 
our natural resources than, I believe, any other group?.  
We do not want to lose this salt mass and have it turned over to the 
Bureaucrats, large corporations, promoters and opportunists, etc.  We see no 
reason why a reasonable form of lease cannot be worked out where we can retain 
possession and the Government still do their work.7   
 
Herein lay Tatum?s primary argument with the federal government.  Despite the 
salt mass being at a depth where it was commercially unfeasible to mine, it had potential 
value that he did not want to lose.  Noting that his family had invested considerable time 
and money locating the dome, he felt due compensation was in order.  He would happily 
lease the land above the salt dome, but should any of the mineral wealth be destroyed, he 
wanted to be reimbursed.  The federal government could either buy the portion that 
would be affected by the tests, or they could buy the whole thing.  He did not care; he 
wanted the money.  The government saw the situation differently.  It wanted to preserve 
as much latitude as possible when it came to contractual obligations with Tatum or the 
landholders over any other salt dome that might be chosen for the tests.  As the choice 
was narrowed to the two domes in Mississippi, the federal government pursued an 
aggressive course towards acquiring land for the test site. 
Sensing the likelihood of a major government program in the state, directors from 
several of the state?s most prominent engineering firms formed a single entity near the 
end of November 1960, the Mississippi Construction and Engineering Company 
                                                 
7  Tatum to Barnett, Stennis, Eastland, and Colmer, Nov. 23, 1960, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome 
T-1 1960, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
 
 103 
(MCEC).  This new superfirm drew upon $10 million worth of assets and benefited from 
local expertise and international support, as many of the firms represented on its board of 
directors had international affiliations.   One of the first things that the new company did 
was alert Stennis?s office of its existence.  In a letter to Stennis?s aide, Marx Huff, 
MCEC?s vice-president of public relations, Jack Stuart, threw MCEC?s hat squarely into 
the ring: ?Our company was formed in order to be large enough to handle any projects 
which might come to Mississippi and, to our knowledge, this is the first time so many of 
the large contractors have united in any single effort.?  The superfirm actively competed 
for primary, secondary, and support contracts, and hoped that with Stennis?s political 
clout they would be able to secure the most important and lucrative arrangements with 
the government.8  
 Meanwhile, Mellen continued his campaign against the program.  Whereas 
Tatum?s approach could be likened to a shotgun, where the shot scatters broadly, 
Mellen?s approach was more akin to a rifle aimed at governmental impropriety and 
material waste.  He made new accusations to Stennis, arguing that the tests were the 
means through which Edward Teller?s desire to end the nuclear test moratorium could be 
justified, and that Ben Hilburn and Andrew Suttle, the two most prominent officials in 
MITRC, were sycophantic co-conspirators.  Furthermore, MITRC had refused to hire a 
fully-trained geologist, preferring instead to utilize a graduate student who was allowed 
the use of state-owned equipment in pursuit of his masters degree in return for his 
?rubber stamp? on all geological reports pertaining to the Dribble surveys.  Calling for 
science to be ?creative but at the same time conservative,? Mellen concluded that ?most 
                                                 
8 Jack N. Stuart to Marx Huff, Jan.3, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 1960, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 104 
scientists will agree that Project Vela Uniform is ultra-liberal.?9  Just a month and a half 
earlier, on February 6, 1961 Mellen had written that ?destruction of mineral resources is 
tantamount to the destruction of life,? and included Humble Oil, the AEC, and the state of 
Mississippi in Suttle?s and MITRC?s treacherous intentions.  He also feared that 
thermonuclear devices would be detonated in the state?s salt domes.  As far as Mellen 
was concerned, a conspiracy was growing wherein several complementary schemes were 
working in concert to bring a destructive program to Mississippi.10 
 Mellen was not alone in his concern for the state?s role in the proposed test 
program.  Retired air force Lt. Col. James Marsalis also wrote to Stennis, fearing a 
veritable environmental apocalypse for the state:  
 
I would like to bring to your attention the $16,000,000 being spent here in 
the State of Mississippi blowing up salt domes, by the Atomic Energy 
Commission. 
Senator, an investigation of this activity will make your hair stand on end.  
Ruined forest and crops --- salt forming desert waste as far as the wind blows.  
Natural rescources [sic] destroyed.  Can Mississippi stand such an act?  No, not 
when we are on our way to becoming[sic] a manufacturing and agricultural 
paradise.  There are other places to detonate these expremintal(sic) explosions, 
with little harm to man or beast. 
You have heard of Fred Mellen, who discovered oil at Tinsley.  He is a 
product of our own State and is recognized as one of the foremost scientest(sic) in 
the United States.  It would be amazing for you to hear him.11   
 
Marsalis?s letter is similar in tone to Mellen?s ?Statement of Personal Opinion,? 
which had raised the AEC?s concerns about Mellen?s influence.  But what Marsalis and 
Tatum alluded to was not environmental at all.  Tatum?s earlier letters, portraying 
                                                 
9 Mellen to Stennis, March 28, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-3 1961, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
10 Mellen to Stennis, Feb. 6, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-3 1961, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
11 William I. Marsalis to Stennis, April 11, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-3 1961, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 105 
Mississippi as an unspoiled region, and Marsalis?s letter referred to salt, which lay 
beneath the surface.  It is possible that Marsalis was referring to plans to bring salt to the 
surface during excavation, and the potential from that, but his argument that Mississippi 
was approaching a state of paradise was far from accurate.  Still, it indicates the reach of 
Mellen?s opposition to atomic testing in the state. 
  Mellen?s animosity toward Suttle continued.  While the MITRC director 
continued to try to bring atomic energy to Mississippi, Mellen continued to rail at Dribble 
in general, and Suttle in particular, as when he wrote Stennis on April 12, 1961: 
  
I may be na?ve in not suspecting that the Defense Department had no more than a 
casual interest in the outcome of Project Vela Uniform, a sub-project of Project Plow 
Share [sic], supposedly set up for peaceful uses of atomic energy. You will note that the 
Clarion Ledger article of April 29 stated that the detonation in the Tatum dome and, or in 
the Bruinsburg dome will be conducted by the Defense department.  In other words, the 
Defense department is more than a cooperative agent in this undertaking, although Dr. 
Suttle has told us that the present testing was part of Project Plow Share.  If there were 
any evidence that a decoupled nuclear shot would be of any aid in development of 
scientific detecting instruments, the project might be a little understandable.  It still 
appears to most of the people that I know over the State of Mississippi that Drew Suttle 
simply wants to start setting off some nuclear firecrackers just for the sake of seeing what 
happens, irrespective of the adverse effects, the moral implications and the financial drain 
on a weak economy.12 
 
 
 For his part, Suttle was engaged in several important pursuits during the first half 
of 1961.  He was determined to bring Dribble to Mississippi and wanted to prepare the 
ground as much as possible to prevent last-moment relocation to another state.  He also 
wanted to increase the benefits of the Dribble tests beyond seismic detection to 
experiments regarding the production of isotopes and heat for electrical power 
generation.  Suttle?s interest in radioisotope generation is unsurprising, as this was his 
                                                 
12 Mellen to Stennis, April 12, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-4 1961, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
 
 106 
area of expertise.  In essence, he wanted to engage in a program similar to what Gnome 
ultimately became: a combined Plowshare/Vela test wherein materials of industrial 
importance might be produced.  More important, Suttle believed that hydrocarbon and 
petrochemical experimentation valuable to state industry could be performed in 
combination with the AEC program.  To Suttle, it only made sense to utilize the tests to 
their utmost economic potential.  Certainly he could not still every disapproving tongue, 
but a financial windfall for the state and the region would with the MITRC converts from 
the ranks of its less-committed detractors.13    
His other ambition focused on the Tenn-Tom Plowshare project.  Noting a $25 
million cost savings on the proposed waterway, he pointed out that the size of the 
waterway itself could be enlarged with the use of nuclear explosives, upgrading it from a 
unidirectional channel with periodic expansions along its course to allow opposing river 
traffic to pass to a true bidirectional watercourse.  He wrote to Stennis:  
 
At the present time?.it is the feeling of  the most competent physicists in 
the United States that devices which are relatively free of fissile fuels can be 
constructed and operated with good efficiency and great economy.  Unfortunately, 
misguided individuals have delayed the testing and further improvement of these 
units by confusing their development with the military program.  I am the last 
person to speak out against the most vigorous program of armament and believe 
that we have been derelict in our responsibilities by failing to test nuclear 
weapons.  But I would also emphasize that the peaceful utilization of nuclear 
explosives is a separate and distinct activity which, I believe, should be 
completely divorced from the weapons development program and regardless of 
the decisions reached in that field, that this peaceful utilization should move 
forward without delay.14 
 
 
                                                 
13 Suttle to W. F. Libby, April 12, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-4 1961, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC. 
14 Suttle to Stennis, April 14, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-4 1961, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
 
 107 
Depending upon one?s point of view, the news concerning Dribble was promising 
for the Piney Woods, or a looming disaster.  On January 1, 1961, a ten-year lease went 
into effect for the land above the Tatum Dome, with annual extensions negotiable among 
the AEC, Frank Tatum, and the Bass family.15  Tatum believed that the agreement was 
obtained under duress: ?Some time ago I had a letter from Senator Stennis in which he 
stated he thought we were in favor of the Atomic Energy Commission?s experiments in 
Mississippi? .We did lease to the AEC 1430 acres of land for the experiments, as we 
were told they would probably condemn it if we didn?t.?16   Tatum received $7,344 per 
year, and additional one-time $7,500 payment for expected tree and growth damage at the 
site.  The Bass family, who grew paper-shell pecans on 100 acres that were in close 
proximity to the dome, leased a parcel of their land to the AEC, receiving $650 per year.  
In all, this amounted to 1,470 acres.17  
A February 8 newspaper story reported that AEC engineer and Mississippi project 
engineer Ray C. Emens stated that the Tatum Dome fully met the technical requirements 
for the Dribble tests.  A week later, Nevada Test Site director James E. Reeves visited the 
area.  Addressing a joint civic club meeting in Hattiesburg, he outlined the AEC?s past 
experience with underground testing, telling the assembled group that the only injury 
caused so far by underground tests had been due to a large kettle of soup overturning and 
scalding a person at the Nevada site.  During the meeting, one waggish reporter asked 
Reeves whether anyone had considered detonating the subterranean shots beneath the 
                                                 
15 Frank Tatum recounted in a letter to his representatives that this date was actually Feb. 18, 1961. 
16 Tatum to Stennis and Eastland, May 26, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-4 1961, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC; Atomic Energy Commisssion, Site Disposal Report Tatum Salt Dome Test Site, 14, 
16.  NTA accession no. NV0338578. 
 
 
 108 
United States Supreme Court building, to which Reeves replied, ?that?s a heck of a thing 
to ask a Yankee.?18   
At the Tatum Dome site, once the lease was concluded, roughnecks began drilling 
into the caprock and the salt below.  At one particular location, twenty-four men 
employed by Texas Water Wells operated a derrick engaged in drilling exploratory holes 
and retrieving core samples.  Only four of the men at the site were from the company 
headquarters in Houston, while the rest came from the oilfields of southern Mississippi.  
It was the same type of hole that many of them had dug several times before, but as one 
of the drillers remarked, ?It?s the first time I ever worked on one where everybody, from 
the start, hoped and prayed that it was a dry hole.?  For the men on the platforms, it was 
more work in a dwindling oil region.  Mississippi?s big strikes were playing out, and 
oilfield work was welcome even though they were fairly certain that they would not 
strike oil.19  Ironically, an oil strike could have eliminated the Tatum Dome from the list 
of possible sites as listed in the Ripple criteria. 
What the men on the derricks especially did not want to hit was high-pressure 
water.  At various depths, sedimentary layers contained large aquifers that could prove to 
be problematic for the program.  The region?s aquifers had been utilized for a long time 
as a water supply for people and livestock.  Despite standard drilling procedures that 
lined the drill holes with an impermeable casing as the hole extended downward, water 
might travel down along the casing to the salt, creating a brine that might contaminate 
several aquifer layers.  Also, there were concerns about the release of radioactive 
                                                 
18 U. S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Developments in Technical Capabilities  
for  Detecting and Identifying Nuclear Weapons Tests: Hearing Before the Joint Committee on Atomic 
Energy 88th Cong., 1st sess., (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,1963), 501; Hattiesburg 
American, Feb. 8, 1961, Feb. 15, 1961. 
19 Hattiesburg American, March 4, 1961. 
 
 109 
materials.  Although the depth of the shots would eliminate the possibility of an 
atmospheric release, water could scour its way into the test chamber along the casing and 
convey highly radioactive materials away from the test site and into public contact.  
Water was trouble. 
Operation Concerto had been planned to employ six atomic test shots in different 
locations and environmental conditions.  Dribble would test at one location.  The 
Concerto devices would have ranged in yield from 250 tons to 50 kt.  Because of the two 
primary candidate locations for Dribble, the device sizes would not range as widely in 
yield.  From July 25-27, 1961, a special JCAE hearing took place wherein the VU 
program was first addressed as a whole, and the Dribble component fully defined.  VU?s 
program manager, Theodore A. George, outlined a six-shot test program.  The devices 
were codenamed ?Record,? at 100 tons yield, ?Hayride,? at 500 tons yield, ?Hermit,? at 
100 tons yield, ?Gaucho,? at 5kt, the highest yield shot, ?Greenbean,? at 25kt, and 
?Tipsy? at 5kt.  ?These tests will furnish us with information on the effectiveness of 
concealment of an underground explosion by decoupling,? George wrote.  ?All of these 
tests will be conducted at a depth of 2,500 feet.?  
 
First we have three small underground nuclear explosions.  Record is to be 
fired in the center of an underground cavity which will provide for complete 
decoupling.  It will be followed by Hayride having a yield five times as much as 
Record, but fired in the same cavity.  This will provide data on the effects of 
partial decoupling.  Both of these shots will then be compared with Hermit with 
the same yield as Record, but fully tamped.  These three events are expected to 
take place in the Tatum Salt Dome in Mississippi. 
The next three events are also intended to furnish data on decoupling but 
at a much higher yield level.  Here we have Gaucho a 5-kiloton event completely 
decoupled; Greenbean a 25-kiloton event partially decoupled; and Tipsy the 
comparison shot of 5 kilotons, tamped.20  
                                                 
20 U. S. Congress,   Hearings Before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy Congress of the 
United States, 87th Cong.; 1st sess. on the Developments in the Field of Detection and Identification of 
 
 110 
 
The Dribble site, which George noted was likely to be located in the Tatum 
Dome, would require several test locations.  At least two chambers would need to be 
excavated, with a corresponding pair of test tunnels for the two tamped shots.  
Fortunately, the Tatum Dome was large enough to accommodate this, despite the high-
yield series having an explosive force 50 times greater than the low-yield series.  
Reflecting on one of the questions raised by Cowboy, no one knew what the effects of 
even a small atomic test in salt would have ? specifically whether the test chamber would 
be reusable as it would have to be during the Dribble series.  Nor did anyone know how 
the walls of a pre-excavated chamber reacted, or if the salt might fissure and allow high-
temperature gases to escape.  The first shots in the two series were decoupled, and there 
would be blast effects on the chamber walls.  Furthermore, the second shot in each series 
would seismically overload, or ?overdrive? the test chambers with explosive energies five 
times as powerful as the decoupled shots.  Overdriving the chambers would explore 
insufficiently decoupled devices in shot-created cavities.  The chambers had to be 
structurally sound enough to withstand the stress, and five months would pass from the 
time of the hearings before Gnome gave any indication as to how salt held up to an 
atomic blast.21 
World events caused VU and Dribble to quickly regain international importance.  
On September 1, 1961, the Soviet Union broke the voluntary test moratorium that had 
been in effect since the end of October 1958 with a 16kt atmospheric test of a tactical 
missile warhead.  In September alone, the USSR conducted twenty-six atomic and 
                                                                                                                                                 
Nuclear Explosions (Project Vela),  July 25, 26, and 27, 1961 (Washington, DC: Government Printing 
Office, 1962), 130, 132-33. 
21 Ibid., 130-33. 
 
 111 
thermonuclear tests ranging from subkiloton to multimegaton yields.  In all, the Soviet 
Union conducted fifty-nine tests from September 1 until November 4, 1961, including the 
awesome Tsar Bomba on October 30, with an estimated yield of 50-60mt.  On several 
dates, up to three tests were conducted during a single day; on one day, four devices were 
detonated.  In many cases, these multiple tests were fired at the same test site.22 
The American nuclear testing program had been dormant for the thirty-four 
months the moratorium lasted, but on September 15 it roared to life, first at NTS, and 
later at several sites in the Pacific.  Until November 4, 1962, the majority of the 
American nuclear testing program had been conducted in the atmosphere.  The final 
Soviet atmospheric test was held on December 25, 1962.  Between the two superpowers, 
this fourteen-month spasm of tests resulted in 100 tests by the United States, and 141 by 
the Soviet Union above and below ground, under water, and at high altitude, before the 
end of atmospheric testing.  These tests were carried out regardless of delicate 
international events, and included seven American and at least four Soviet detonations 
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.23   
At the beginning of October 1961, the AEC and DARPA selected the Tatum 
Dome as the site for Dribble, removing the Bruinsburg site from contention.  The criteria 
having been met, field activity was put on a standby status, and the Dribble program 
further refined.24  The biggest battle between Tatum and the AEC was beginning to take 
shape, over the salt dome itself.   
                                                 
22 Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 493-99. 
23 Cochran, et. al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 159-63; Podvig, Russian Strategic Nuclear 
Forces, 493-506. 
24 ?Significant Events In the Dribble Program,? undated, NTA accession no. NV16661. 
 
 112 
Beginning earlier in the year, Tatum had started to feel that his correspondence to 
Barnett and others was making the rounds of the AEC.  They seemed to know too much 
about his objections concerning the way the operations on his land were proceeding.  For 
instance, in a letter to Mellen on March 31, 1961, he not only railed against the United 
Nations: ?we are not for world government or world court and had thought that the 
United Nations should be moved to some distant point beneath the ocean,? but requested 
that his correspondence be limited in exposure: ?one thing we have found out is, 
everytime we write, the letter always ends up with the Atomic Energy Commission.?   
Ironically, this letter did end up with Stennis with a penned notation at the bottom, 
reading, ?Senator: I thought you might want to take note of this ? Fred M.? 25  This 
request from Tatum became increasingly common in his correspondence to his elected 
representatives.  His paranoia was warranted: his letters were indeed shared by their 
recipients with the AEC.   
Tatum understood he was agreeing to a lease on the land and that the mineral 
rights question had yet to be addressed.  For nearly a year since its decision to locate 
Dribble at the Tatum Dome, the AEC believed that a fight with Tatum was inevitable, 
and it would be over the salt.  Earlier letters from Tatum and Mellen had argued the 
importance and value of the large salt deposit to the future of the state of Mississippi, and 
by extension, to the United States.  Tatum was not going to mine it, as it would be 
economically foolish to retrieve.  But that did not mean that he would allow it to be 
devalued.  If the salt was going to be used or ruined by the AEC, he wanted fair 
                                                 
25 Tatum to Mellen, March 31, 1961, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-3 1961, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC. 
 
 113 
compensation for the material, and offered to accept one-eighth market value for any salt 
used or destroyed.26 
The AEC?s position was twofold.  First, they asserted that only a portion of the 
salt was likely to be made radioactive, but a large quantity of salt was going to be mined 
during the creation of the two enormous test chambers 2,700 feet underground.  This salt 
was going to be excavated either by brine mining, where water washed away the 
unwanted salt and the resulting brine was pumped to the surface for storage and removal, 
or by mechanical means.  Either way, there would be hundreds of thousands, if not more 
than a million, cubic meters of salt brought to the surface by contractors employed by the 
AEC and not by Frank Tatum.  Paying Tatum for the salt would amount to undue 
enrichment at taxpayers? expense.  Second, several large shafts would have to be drilled 
into the salt dome for equipment insertion and salt extraction.  These were also regarded 
as undue enrichment, as they would open the Tatum Dome?s resources to easier mining, 
again at the taxpayers? expense.  There would be no investment by Tatum, yet he wanted 
the salt, or to be paid for it.  Tatum replied that would accept condemnation of two to 
three percent of the salt mass and all the shafts excavated by the government.  Still, this 
was unacceptable to the AEC.27   
The effect of the Tatum salt on the global market was another element in this 
conflict.  Tatum recounted a visit from a worried Morton International Salt Company 
representative early in 1961 who inquired as to what was to be done with the enormous 
amount of salt, estimated at two million tons, which would be brought to the surface.  
                                                 
26 Tatum to Stennis, Dec. 2, 1960. Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-2 1960-61, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
27 Tatum to Seaborg, undated.  Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-7 1963, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  
 
 114 
Tatum had his own ideas, while NTS director James Reeves offered another possibility: 
trucking it south and dumping it into the Gulf of Mexico.  Estimates of $16 million for 
the salt were bandied about, although Tatum considered the figure far too conservative.  
Before any talk of cavernous excavations and atomic testing, the salt had been considered 
practically worthless to Tatum because it held no oil or gas.  Ironically, it was extremely 
valuable to the world salt market only if it remained there undisturbed, for if it was 
suddenly made available, salt prices would plummet.28 
The standby period at the Dribble site stretched for nearly a year.  Livermore 
Radiation Laboratory (LRL) announced on August 15, 1962, that it was ready to take 
over control of the activities at the Dribble test site, as well as the responsibility for 
appointing a technical manager.  Most important, during the standby the configuration of 
the test program had drastically changed.  The number of test shots was halved, from six 
to three: a 5kt tamped shot, named ?Salmon;?  a 100-ton decoupled shot that would be 
fired in a fully excavated test chamber named ?Sand;? and a control shot, a 100-ton 
tamped blast, named ?Tar.?29  The proposed test program was expected to last a year, 
beginning in May 1963 and ending in May 1964.  The months between October and April 
were considered unfeasible because of a seasonal increase in seismic noise, due to 
atmospheric storms and wave noise from the Gulf of Mexico.  The newly configured 
program would require only one small chamber to be excavated, saving on construction 
and salt disposal costs.30        
                                                 
28 Hattiesburg American, Jan. 21, Feb. 15, 1961. 
29 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Re-Evaluation of Salt Domes, 7, NTA accession number 
NV0338573. 
30 John S. Foster, Jr., LRL, to Brig. Gen. A. W. Betts, AEC, Aug. 15, 1962,  NTA accession no. 
NV00313001. 
 
 115 
In September 1962, the AEC made its move, filing to acquire the mineral rights in 
the Tatum Dome through condemnation.  A letter from AEC general manager Maj. Gen. 
Alvin R. Luedecke to Senator Stennis explained the government?s reason for initiating 
condemnation proceedings, including the need to control the area around the region 
where the radioactive debris would be contained, and possible damage to surrounding 
mineral deposits due to tunnels, shafts, and the emplacement of experiments.  In addition:  
 
ownership of a large part of the mineral interests in the land is in dispute, and 
several parties have indicated that each owns, and will claim title to, the same salt 
mass within the Tatum Dome.  The time required for legal action to clear title to 
the mineral interests would be incompatible with the current schedule for 
execution of the series.  For this and other reasons, it is the opinion of the Corps 
of Engineers, acting for the AEC in this matter, that condemnation will be 
necessary to obtain some or all of the mineral interests.31   
 
Frank Tatum was outraged.  The claimants to the mineral rights were Tatum, the 
Bass family, and the Hibernia National Bank in New Orleans.  The relationship was 
complicated: Tatum and Bass lay claim to the surface land, which they acknowledged 
they had leased to the AEC, but this did not extend to mineral rights; nor could it, 
because Tatum bought the land over the salt dome in 1937 from Hibernia, and the bank 
retained the mineral rights.  But, as Tatum wrote, ?our attorneys and we, ourselves, have 
always construed this as it is written to mean Hibernia retained only the oil and gas 
minerals and that the salt mass belongs to us.  We drilled the land and discovered the salt 
mass after extensive seismographic operation.?? 32   Luedecke realized that this Gordian 
                                                 
31 It is unclear what the exact role of the Corps of Engineers was in the condemnation decision, 
except that it was easier for the Corps to condemn property for government use than the AEC, which was 
technically a civilian entity.  Alvin R. Luedecke to Stennis, Sep. 26, 1962, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-5 
1962, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
32 Tatum to Stennis, Eastland, Colmer and Williams, Sep. 26, 1962, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome 
T-5 1962, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
 
 116 
knot needed to be severed quickly, or else the Dribble site would likely remain in limbo 
for years as the lawsuits dragged on.  Tatum was a headstrong man from a powerful 
family, and such suits would be fought on his home turf to his advantage.  As distasteful 
as condemnation was, it would mean that Tatum would at least be minimally 
compensated for mineral resources he had no plans to exploit, the surface lease would 
function as signed, and later the land would be returned.  The salt would belong to the 
government.  Of course, Tatum saw this as further government intrusion into an area 
where it was not wanted.  As usual, he blamed the Kennedy administration and their 
efforts to build ?facilities in South Mississippi where the negro and white will have to eat, 
sleep, bathe, etc., together.?33  Tatum favored a mineral lease, and continued to demand 
from the government terms he found more favorable than condemnation. 
On October 15, 1962, a memo went out naming Dominic Magnetti as the 
temporary Project Officer for Project Dribble.  Magnetti, normally an Operations Officer 
at the Nevada Operations Office (NVOO) was transferred to the Hattiesburg Project 
Office at 1485 West Pine Street, and from there began to prepare for the bidding process 
that would soon begin as the AEC?s primary contractor, Holmes & Narver, Inc. (H&N) 
sought subcontractors to carry out the work at the Dribble site.  Magnetti only held his 
post for a single month before being replaced by Leonard J. Yelinek, who would be the 
permanent manager of the Dribble site.  Yelinek had been employed at NTS in 1956 as a 
project engineer, and in January 1962 was Area Engineer for Pacific Operations in 
Honolulu.   His duties were primarily administrative, while others such as Jim Reeves 
                                                 
33 Ibid. 
 
 117 
bore much of the publicity work, traveling from NTS to answer occasional questions 
from local residents at civic meetings.34   
In late October, Holmes & Narver issued a notice to mining and engineering firms 
for bids to excavate the underground chamber to be used in the decoupling test at 
Dribble.  This was the most lucrative of all of the contracts at the site, and five firms 
ultimately submitted their proposals to Holmes and Narver: the Dravo Corporation, 
Pittsburgh; Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, Inc., Oklahoma City; Brown and Root, Houston; 
Camay Drilling Co. ? Patrick Harrison, Inc., Los Angeles and Golden, Colorado; and the 
Mississippi Construction and Engineering Company.35  This contract was the reason that 
MCEC was formed, and it would keep much of the project money in Mississippi while 
acting to further Barnett?s promotion of the state?s technical development.  Stennis went 
to work immediately to promote the superfirm?s bid, telegraphing Reeves in the middle 
of November and meeting with Mike Manatos on John Kennedy?s staff at the end of the 
month to agitate for their cause.  Stennis claimed that he was not seeking special favor for 
the group, but ?with everything being like equal, this Company is entitled to a break and 
that is the reason for the Senator?s call.?36  Certainly, this was not true: Stennis took a 
strong personal interest in the success of the MCEC and continued to lobby on their 
behalf.   
In the end, it was not enough.  The first notification of the decision came on the 
evening of Monday, December 3.  Reeves called Stennis?s office in De Kalb, Mississippi, 
to notify him that not only was the MCEC?s bid not chosen, it was ?low on the list.?  
                                                 
34 Press release HP-62-3, Nov. 15, 1962, NTA accession no. NVO326733. 
35 Betts to Stennis, Dec. 14, 1962, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-5 1962, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC. 
36 James Reeves to Stennis, Nov. 16, 1962; minutes from meeting between Mike Manatos and 
Stennis, Nov. 30, 1962, both in Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-6 1962, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
 
 118 
Reeves acknowledged Stennis?s lobbying efforts and said that ?if Senator wanted to take 
it up higher in Washington, of course he could.? 37  Defeated, the MCEC waited for the 
opportunity to bid on future contracts.   Despite the proximity of the member firms, their 
apparent familiarity with the region and their international affiliates, MCEC lost to the 
Camay-Patrick Harrison (CPH) partnership.  Camay had established itself as a competent 
drilling firm and prior to the contract had been busy working for the Pan American 
Petroleum Corporation, prospecting for oil in Utah.  Little is known of Patrick Harrison, 
Inc., except that it was also engaged in mine and tunnel work.38   CPH prepared to 
excavate the ninety-five-foot-diameter spherical test chamber, as well as a vertical forty-
two-inch-diameter shaft drilled next to the location of the chamber and connected by an 
?uphill drift,? or inclined connecting tunnel, that would allow mined salt to be removed 
for surface storage.  Other ventilation and auxiliary shafts, drilled to the test chamber 
approximately 2,000 feet below the surface would also be excavated by the CPH.  It 
would later prove to be a pyrrhic victory for CPH; it was a lump of Christmas coal for the 
MCEC.39  
 A little more than a month later, an important contract was issued to another 
outside firm.  Six ten-inch diameter shafts, ranging from 1,000 to 4,000 feet deep, needed 
to be drilled at the site, and oilfield veteran Big Chief Drilling Company from Oklahoma 
City won with their bid.  In business since the mid-1930s, the company had created a 
reputation for achieving previously unheard-of depths in the Oklahoma oil fields; in 
                                                 
37 ?L.L.? to ?Eph,? Dec. 12, 1962, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-6 1962, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.  There is no available explanation why the MCEC bid was ?low on the list.? 
38 http://oilgas.ogm.utah.gov/Data_Center/LiveData_Search/view_pdf.php?file=4303710864.pdf, 
16; Frontier-Kemper Constructors, Inc. ?Crosscut? Vol. 16, Issue 2, http://www.frontier-
kemper.com/crosscut/ccyearend07.pdf  (accessed Feb. 9, 2010).  
39 Press release attached to Betts to Stennis, Dec. 14, 1962, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-6 1962, 
Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
 
 119 
1956, one of their wells reached a depth of 16,000 feet.  Beating out seven competitors, 
Big Chief was tasked to create the deep holes required by the two tamped tests, and the 
accompanying shafts for monitoring equipment.  Big Chief increasingly became an 
important subcontractor at the site.40   
 One bright spot for Mississippi industry in relation to Dribble came on March 9, 
1963, when a firm from Laurel, the Studdard Workover Company, contracted with 
Reynolds Electrical and Engineering (RE&E) to rework five instrument holes at the site 
to prepare them for use in the tests.  RE&E had long been associated with America?s 
atomic testing program.  Like Holmes & Narver, it was a primary contractor for the AEC; 
H&N assumed responsibility for the physical preparation of the test sites, while RE&E 
and another firm, Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier (EG&G) took care of the electrical 
and electronic tasks, respectively.  The co-founder of this firm, Dr. Harold Edgerton, 
developed remarkably synchronous timing and firing circuitry for both atomic devices 
and recording equipment.41  Studdard Workover?s contract with Reynolds was an 
encouraging development; it was important work, and though unrelated to device 
emplacement or chamber excavation, refurbishing the previously-drilled instrumentation 
holes saved the Dribble program money and put a Mississippi drilling firm to work at the 
site.42    
                                                 
40 Oklahoma Energy Resources Board.  ?Oklahoma: Where Energy Reigns.? 
http://www.oerb.com/Portals/0/docs/ForEducators/Oklahoma_Book_LR.pdf, p. 117 (accessed Feb. 9, 
2010); Bulletin HA-63-5, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission Hattiesburg Project Office Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi, Jan. 18, 1963.  NTA accession no. NVO326728.   
41 Edgerton was also responsible for the development of ultra-high speed photography.  Slow-
motion images of expanding atomic fireballs made within hundred-thousandths of a second, and fascinating 
movies of rifle bullets penetrating apples and cutting playing cards were the result of Edgerton?s efforts.   
42 Bulletin HA-63-10, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission Hattiesburg Project Office Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi, Mar. 9, 1963, NTA accession no. NVO326728.   
 
 120 
The MCEC might have been defeated, but Frank Tatum was not.  His next 
destination was the Chancery Court in Lamar County, where he conceded the oil rights at 
the Tatum Dome, but claimed that the salt was discovered three years after he bought the 
land.  Thus, as discoverer of the salt, it was completely and totally his.  Furthermore, he 
charged that the government condemnation was an expedient wholly designed to avoid a 
hearing on the matter.  The AEC had Civil Action 1765 in the United States District 
Court that would allow them to obtain all of the mineral rights in the salt dome for 
$32,235.00.  Tatum countered that according to his estimates his family had spent some 
$125,000 in the process of discovering the salt dome; furthermore, of this $32,235.00 
would have to be divided between Tatum and the Hibernia Bank with Tatum estimating 
that he would receive between $1,400.00 and $1,500.00.43   
The federal court in Jackson, Mississippi issued the Order of Possession on 
December 21, 1962, condemning the salt dome.44  Tatum still attempted to ameliorate his 
losses by arguing that only part of the salt should be condemned ? the portion that 
contained the tests, and if it would satisfy AEC chairman Glenn Seaborg, Tatum?s 
political representatives, and his attorneys, this could also include any shafts, 
excavations, or anything else that could constitute undue enrichment.  This, too, was 
rejected by the AEC, which felt that an all-or-nothing approach was preferable to partial 
condemnation, thus removing the possibility of further wrangling over the salt.  By April 
1963, the issue was largely decided, and Tatum would have little to do with further 
proceedings at the Dribble site while it remained under government control.  His 
                                                 
43 Tatum to Eastland, Stennis, Colmer, and Williams, dated Dec. 18 and 31, 1962. Subseries: 
Tatum Salt Dome T-6 1962, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
44 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission and U. S. Department of Defense, Project Dribble (Las 
Vegas: Nevada Operations Office, 1964), 10, NTA accession no. NVO0321724. 
 
 121 
compensation exceeded that which he initially expected, as the AEC paid him 
$142,164.25 for the mineral rights in the salt dome.  The land was leased, the salt 
belonged to the government, and that was that.45  
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
45 Tatum to Eastland, Stennis, Colmer, and Williams, March 6-April 1, 1963, Subseries: Tatum 
Salt Dome T-7 1963. Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC; U. S. Atomic Energy Commisssion Nevada 
Operations Office, Site Disposal Report Tatum Salt Dome Test Site (Dribble/Hattiesburg) Lamar County, 
Mississippi NVO-88 (February, 1971), 16, NTA accession no. NV0338578. 
 
 122 
Chapter Six 
Salmon Run 
  
 While the salt under the Dribble site was contested in the courts, Hattiesburg 
began feeling the effects of the impending test program.  Well drillers, necessary for site 
surveying and sampling, had been active since late 1960, sinking shafts into the caprock, 
salt, and surrounding soil to chart the location of aquifers and sedimentary strata.  The 
Dribble program?s schedule had the first nuclear shot set for May 1963.  This gave the 
contractor, Camay-Patrick Harris barely five months from the award of the contract to 
complete the job of excavating the ninety-five foot diameter decoupling chamber.  The 
wells through the caprock and deep into the salt dome had to penetrate numerous layers 
of sand, clay, and gravel.  Within some of these layers were aquifers, with some 
containing fresh water and some containing brine.  Like underground rivers, these 
aquifers generally flowed at constant rates.  Farmers and residents of the region knew 
these aquifers well, and had for many years tapped these sources of fresh water for their 
use, as well as for their livestock.  Eventually, water would lead to a reappraisal of the 
whole Dribble site, and for a time it appeared that the AEC might have to leave 
Mississippi prematurely. 
 The flip side of this dilemma was a benefit to Hattiesburg, because the longer the 
crews worked at the site the longer they stayed in the city and contributed to its economy.  
Despite the hubbub raised by Tatum over the condemnation of the mineral rights, the city 
was eager to do business with the federal government.  Hattiesburg had been an 
intersection of road and rail lines, and it had a commercial airport.  Southern Airways and 
Delta Airlines operated regularly out of Hattiesburg, and with the need to transport 
 
 123 
equipment and personnel to and from the test site, the air force anticipated operating from 
there as well.  To do this, the air force needed to be able to fly its mainstay transport 
aircraft, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, from the Hattiesburg airport.  The Hercules was 
designed for relatively short take offs and landings.  Its six-wheel undercarriage 
maximized the aircraft?s ?footprint,? or weight distribution.  Still, the Hattiesburg public 
works commissioner, C.B. ?Pat? Patterson,1 and air force personnel were concerned 
whether the city?s existing strip could handle the large transports.  The aircraft were 
attached to the Air Force Technical Applications Command (AFTAC), which had been 
created long before Vela as the primary military department dedicated to atomic test 
detection.  In addition to transporting equipment and personnel, AFTAC aircraft would 
observe the Dribble tests from the air, the Hercules?s long range and endurance being a 
benefit for extended loiter-time observation.   
In mid-May 1963, AFTAC notified Patterson of its desire to operate from the 
Hattiesburg airport.  AFTAC sent a package of information including a pilot?s manual for 
the C-130A to provide operational and technical specifications as well as loading tables 
that showed the Hercules?s weight distribution similar to the older and familiar C-47.  
Patterson replied that consultation with airport engineers led to some concerns that would 
be diminished by drier weather, because wet soil beneath the runway could lead to 
damage from heavily laden airplanes.2  AFTAC was certainly welcome to operate from 
the Hattiesburg airport, but: ?we would grant our permission for landing your aircraft on 
the condition that if any damage is done to the runways, we would expect your agency to 
                                                 
1 Thus his name is recorded by the Hattiesburg city office.  His wife, who also worked for the city, 
is recorded as being known as ?Mrs. C.B. Patterson.? 
2 The question regarding suitability of the Hattiesburg airport was directly connected to weight, 
not length of the runway, for it was at least 5,000 feet long, and currently is over 6,000 feet long. 
 
 124 
reimburse the City for the cost of repairs.?  In the end, wishing to simplify operations and 
lessen the growing expense of the Dribble operations, AFTAC opened an operations 
office in Hattiesburg on May 27, but on June 3 notified Patterson that it would stage its 
aircraft from Brookley Field in Mobile, Alabama.  This removed any possibility that 
AFTAC could be held liable for damage to the Hattiesburg airport, particularly if it was 
not caused by the AFTAC airplanes but by normal wear and tear on the facilities.3   
 The dates of the airport correspondence reveal the official decision to push the 
date for the first test, the 5kt Salmon, back from May to the week of July 8, 1963.  Still 
within the one-year window, the extra two months gave the excavation crews precious 
additional time, especially considering the fickle nature of spring and summer weather in 
the South.  Other important work had already been conducted in relation to the Dribble 
tests.  Between April 1 and 10, some twenty chemical high explosive tests were 
conducted within a 120-mile radius around the test site.  Ranging from 500 to 4,000 
pounds, the blasts were conducted to investigate further seismic anomalies that could 
affect the shock wave from the nuclear tests and to calibrate recording equipment.4    
 While AFTAC and the airport were negotiating the use of the Hattiesburg airport, 
nine single-story structures were erected at distances varying from 3/5 to 3 ? miles from 
the Dribble test site.  Two of these were cement block buildings, while the other two were 
frame construction.  They were arrayed along two axes: one towards Baxterville to the 
south, and one towards Purvis to the east.  These structures were instrumented and used 
                                                 
3 Capt. S.E. McGrew, Deputy Commander AFTAC, to C. B. Patterson, Hattiesburg Public Works 
Commissioner, May 13, 14, June 13, 1963; Patterson to McGrew, May 21, 1963, folder 9, box 133: 
Commissioner C.B. Patterson: Atomic Energy Commission ? Project Dribble (1963-1964) - M208  
Hattiesburg Municipal Records, Records of City Commissioners, McCain Archives, University of Southern 
Mississippi Manuscript Collections, MCAUSM (hereafter cited as M208 MCAUSM). 
4 McGrew to Patterson, May 17, 1963, folder 9, box 133: Commissioner C.B. Patterson: U. S. 
Atomic Energy Commission ? Project Dribble (1963-1964) M208 MCAUSM; Richard X. Donovan to 
Stennis, Mar. 21, 1963, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-7 1963, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 125 
to assess the ground movement from the 5kt Salmon test.  Although noted as an 
experimental program in their own right, test buildings had less to do with the scientific 
observation of ground motion from a test in a salt dome and more to do with 
indemnification of the AEC, which knew that many of the structures in the area were 
vulnerable to damage or collapse.  The experimental buildings would act as controls 
when the expected claims came rolling in after the Salmon test.  In conjunction with 
safeguarding the citizens from their activities, the AEC was determined to reduce its own 
liabilities.5   
An April 5 memo from Alvin Luedecke to General Austin W. Betts, director of 
the AEC?s Department of Military Applications (DMA) following Starbird, noted that the 
Dribble program was on schedule, and that it had ?now reached the point where it is 
considered essential to initiate a rather intensive public information program in order to 
assure continuing public acceptance of the program and to initiate actions required so that 
the proposed mid-summer detonation schedule for the initial shot may be met.?  Part of 
this call to action was an area-wide structural survey to be conducted by Holmes & 
Narver engineers, contacts between local residents and United States Public Health 
Service (USPHS) representatives attached to the Dribble program, and drafting of form 
letters to local residents who would either have to evacuate the area or be asked to be 
outside their houses during the test.  Timetables were created specifying certain points of 
contact with Governor Barnett, local officials, and the AEC.  As it ultimately turned out, 
                                                 
5 Bulletin HA:63-15, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Hattiesburg Project Office, Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi May 15, 1963, NTA accession no. NV0326716. 
 
 126 
this schedule was wildly optimistic, but in April and May 1963, a July date for Salmon 
looked possible.6 
 As Frank Tatum had previously explained to Governor Barnett, the region around 
the Tatum Salt dome ?is blessed with many creeks, streams, branches and springs, and 
practically all of our people have artesian water available.?  That water proved difficult to 
drill through.  The sites where CPH had begun operations struck water on the way down 
to their target depth.  This was not unexpected, as core samples revealed the existence of 
several aquifer layers between the surface and the top of the caprock.  Oil drillers were 
experts at keeping overlying water from flowing into oil wells.  The most common 
method was to line the hole with a metal casing extending to the bottom of the well and 
puncturing it at levels where desirable materials ? natural gas and oil ? were located by 
core sample analysis.  The contractors drilling at the salt dome found it excessively 
difficult to prevent the water from entering their boreholes because of the large diameters 
of the wells.  This threatened the most important test at the Dribble site: the decoupling 
test.  In order for the ninety-five-foot-diameter chamber to be excavated at a 2,000-foot 
depth, some 1,200 feet of overlying soil, clay, sand, aquifers, and caprock had to be 
penetrated before even reaching the salt, and then the hole had to continue for almost 800 
feet before reaching the excavation site.  Furthermore, there had to be at least two such 
holes, and they had to be absolutely watertight to ensure the safety of those excavating 
the chamber.  In one scenario, a water leak into the chamber would hamper the 
excavation; in a worst-case scenario a catastrophic leak could kill an excavation crew 
hollowing out the subterranean cavity and ruining the salt dome beyond further use. 
                                                 
6 Luedecke to Betts, ?Project Dribble Progress Report,? April. 5, 1963, NTA accession no. 
NV0075301. 
 
 127 
 Water posed another threat to the test itself.  If any was present in the test 
chamber, it would immediately flash into steam when the decoupled shot was fired, 
adding mechanical energy to the test and potentially affecting the data.  Steam caused by 
a tamped test could work its way through fissures that occurred naturally in the dome, or 
were caused by the detonation of the test device.  It could also blast the plug of concrete 
and gravel into the atmosphere like a giant cannon.  The water had to be contained or 
another option had to be found.  The vent shaft to the chamber, penetrating to 2,000 feet, 
cased with thirty-inch-diameter pipe 150 feet into the dome and sealed with cement grout 
and other materials defied all efforts at waterproofing and caused months of delay.  
Although it was pumped dry on November 1, 1963, eighteen days later it was found to be 
filled with water that reached ?within several hundred feet from the top.?  The thirty-inch 
diameter ventilation shaft was the smallest of the three that were needed for the cavity 
excavation; the seventy-inch production shaft that was begun had been abandoned at 950 
feet because of casing failure.7  
 James Reeves, Nevada Operations Office Manager, stayed up to date on the bad 
news.  Despite the best efforts of the engineers, drillers, and hydrologists, all three shafts 
were constantly flooded by pressurized water that forced its way past the grouting 
materials and casing.  Ordering a ?thorough study by highly qualified authorities in the 
country of the engineering problems that have been encountered in construction work at 
the Project Dribble site,? Reeves cut back the operations at the site ?to a status of 
minimal activity? in December.  In short, the Dribble tests would not be conducted 
                                                 
7 Bulletin HA:63-22, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Hattiesburg Project Office, Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi, Nov. 18, 1963, NTA accession no. NV0326711; U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Project 
Manager?s Report: Project Dribble (Salmon Event), NVO-24 (July 1966), 111, NTA accession no. 
NV0004351. 
 
 128 
anytime soon, if at all.  The year 1963 ended with Dribble again in limbo, while the AEC 
and its consultants scratched their heads.  It was cold comfort that environmental factors 
would only allow for the testing window to open again in April 1964, when accurate 
seismic data could again be recorded.8 
 The problems at the Dribble site did not stop the overall progress of the VU 
program.  On October 26, 1963, the first atomic test of the series was fired at Fallon, 
Nevada.  Yielding 12kt, the device, codenamed ?Shoal,? was a tamped shot detonated 
1,200 feet below ground in a shaft.  Shoal was a fully contained seismic experiment, and 
though it was initially planned to follow the first Dribble test, there was no reason to hold 
it up ? especially in light of increasing competition for funding.  Already Vela had been 
reduced in size, and potentially could be further dismembered by the accountant?s axe.  
By proceeding with the series, the AEC could show some return for the money and 
planning that had been spent on Vela and the doomed Concerto series.   
 The flooding problem at the Dribble site condemned the shafts for the excavation 
of the chamber for the decoupling test.  This experiment was one of the primary reasons 
for choosing the Tatum Dome; the other was that it could accommodate both phases of 
the originally proposed series.  If it could not be used for the decoupling tests, they would 
have to be moved elsewhere.  During the lull in activities at the test site, several other salt 
domes that had originally been considered for the Ripple/Dribble program were 
reappraised.  Environmental conditions limited the time period when seismic data could 
be clearly received, basically from April until November, when weather-related and other 
seismic noise was relatively low.  This pause in activities at the site gave engineers time 
                                                 
8 Bulletin HA:63-23, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Hattiesburg Project Office, Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi, Dec. 20, 1963, NTA accession no. NV0326710. 
 
 129 
to examine what course should be followed.  Salmon was a less troublesome shaft to 
drill, and due to its yield, it needed to be detonated where it would have a lesser effect on 
the surrounding population.  Sand and Tar were much smaller, and could be staged in a 
greater variety of locations.  The Dribble program started with six atomic tests, then it 
was three; the growing likelihood was that the Tatum Dome would be the site of only one 
shot.     
 Ross Barnett had actively encouraged high tech industry into Mississippi, and the 
maintenance of segregation during his administration.  The 1963 gubernatorial campaign 
was the beginning of the end of Barnett?s political career, and resulted in Paul Johnson 
Jr.?s ascension to the governor?s office.  Formerly Barnett?s lieutenant governor, and son 
of former governor Paul Johnson Sr., the younger Johnson ran with a segregationist tone 
that accorded with Barnett?s rhetoric, but upon his inauguration, his tone changed 
dramatically.  Despite his efforts to keep James Meredith out of the University of 
Mississippi, and his gubernatorial tenure being tarred by the disappearance of civil rights 
workers, Johnson was a man of conscience, realizing that Mississippi would never 
progress if gross racial inequalities were permitted to continue.  Johnson managed to 
anger just about everyone during his tenure as governor because he actively refused to 
segregate or desegregate Mississippi.  Most important, he did not stand in the way of the 
changing social situation in his state.  Johnson would not oppose change, preferring a 
laissez faire approach coupled with continuing efforts to bring in technologically-
advanced industry into the state.  It proved to be a wise choice, as demonstrated when 
Litton Industries decided to locate its ?Shipyard of the Future? in Pascagoula in 1967.  
The challenge to Southern governors in the age of expanding federal defense contracts 
 
 130 
was to maintain a connection to the old ways while changing their tone enough to satisfy 
Washington.9         
 While weather and budgetary threats loomed, construction at the site resumed in 
earnest in April 1964, as a second shaft for the Salmon device was begun.  Designated 
Site 1A, this new 17 ?-inch-diameter hole progressed steadily as new methods of 
grouting the casing avoided the water problem from the previous year.  The target depth 
for Site 1A was 2,700 feet.  The first 2,200 feet would be cased with steel, with the final 
500 feet excavated directly into the salt stock.  This uncased portion of the hole was to 
eliminate the casing from the region where the maximum predicted ?chimney? area 
would be located.  The chimney was expected to develop where the material fractured 
and loosened by the detonation collapsed into the blast cavity.  Because the salt was rigid, 
and the upper limit of it was buried 1,469 feet below caprock and overlying strata, a 
subsidence crater would not form.  Instead, a spherical chamber would initially be created 
by the blast, and shortly thereafter molten and fractured salt would drop to the bottom of 
the chamber, making the expected cavity have a shape roughly similar to that of an egg, 
with the lower part partially filled with this melted and crumbled debris.  The prediction 
of the chimney?s maximum height was 435 feet.  The absence of the steel casing 
enhanced the blast?s ability to help stem the emplacement hole as fractured materials 
were blasted upwards toward the surface.    This worked in concert with the materials 
poured from the surface down the hole, a mixture of pea gravel and concrete, added 
shortly after the device was emplaced.  In addition, were the casing to extend into the 
                                                 
9 Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt,? 358. 
 
 131 
chimney region, it would likely be seriously damaged and would complicate or 
completely frustrate any efforts to utilize the Site 1A shaft for chamber reentry.10    
 In addition to Site 1A, numerous other shafts were sunk into the salt dome.  Along 
with reopened and reworked instrumentation holes, several new shafts for 
instrumentation and water sampling were drilled at various locations around the 1,750-
acre site.  The depths varied greatly for the instrumentation holes, ranging from near-
surface emplacements to ones below the Salmon emplacement depth.  All of the holes 
within an 1,100-foot radius of the detonation point were stemmed in the same fashion as 
the Salmon emplacement hole, using gravel and concrete to block the escape of highly-
pressurized gases from the detonation.  The sampling wells were drilled to the depth of 
their respective aquifers, with several wells assigned to each aquifer to detect the 
quantity, direction, and speed of any radioactive contamination if it was released.11 
 Satisfactory progress also continued at the Dribble site where NVOO manager 
Reeves issued more timetables and technical information to the parties involved with the 
test.  Along with enhanced safety procedures and concerns regarding nearby oil and water 
wells, Salmon finally was assigned an official operational period, beginning on July 10, 
1964, and indefinitely continuing into the postshot period.  In addition, a second test 
phase was planned for 1966.  Salmon was projected to be ready for early September 
1964.12  
                                                 
10 Dribble Public Safety Meeting, July13, 1964, 4, NTA accession no. NV0096095; Atomic 
Energy Commission, Salmon Event ? Project Dribble  (July 17, 1964), 30, 43, NTA accession no. 
NV0075308. 
11 Atomic Energy Commission, Salmon Event of Project Dribble: Report to the General Manager 
by the Director of Military Application (July 17, 1964), 8, NTA accession no. NV0075308. 
12 Operation Order NV-OPO-5-64 (July 10, 1964), 7-8, 170,  NTA accession no. NV0096218. 
 
 132 
 Still, there was the question of the other two Dribble shots, Sand and Tar.  
Salmon?s emplacement was comparatively simple because keeping the water out of 
Station 1A was proving effective, but the larger holes needed for chamber excavation 
were not technically feasible in the wet environment over the dome.  Thirty-nine salt 
domes were originally considered as candidates for the Ripple/Dribble program.  Of 
these, eight domes in Texas and Louisiana were reappraised for the decoupling test.  The 
resulting report pointed to the Hockley Dome, thirty-five miles northwest of Houston, 
Texas.   Because it was a salt mine, it had a large sixteen-by-sixteen foot shaft that ran 
1,650 feet deep into the dome.  It had lift and hoist equipment to handle the large 
quantities of salt that would need to be removed, and was fully ventilated.  Originally it 
had been approved for the Phase I low-yield tests of the Ripple/Dribble program.  
Excavation and instrumentation of a decoupling chamber could be accomplished 
relatively quickly.  The main piercement points at Hockley were free of aquifers so water 
intrusion would not be a problem.  The tamped Tar shot would require a shaft similar to 
Salmon?s, about 2,000 feet deep into the Hockley Dome.  The Sand cavity could be 
excavated from within the mine, requiring about 2,500 feet of new shafts.  Hockley 
would be cheaper than the Tatum Dome, estimated to cost $13,195,000 versus 
$13,860,260 at the Mississippi site.  Strangely, this figure did not include the cost of 
buying the actual site.  The tradeoffs included the proximity to a major metropolitan area 
(not considered to be a hazard due to the very low yield, but problematic in terms of 
public opinion and support), and the effect on the seismic program caused by the use of 
two test sites for Dribble.  Program managers recommended continuing the investigation 
into relocating the two small shots to Texas.13   
                                                 
13 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission,  Re-Evaluation of Salt Domes, 3, 4, 7 13, 16, 18, 23, 25-27, 
 
 133 
 Back in Mississippi, ground motion surveys and predictions led to the delineation 
of a 1.6-mile radius around the test site, where an additional force equal to gravity (1G) 
was expected.  Some sixty people lived within this area; James Reeves returned to the site 
in July and August to address the residents around the Dribble site.  As part of the site 
preparations, H&N surveyed private residences and other structures and prepared detailed 
drawings of each to brace them against the expected shock.  The USPHS ordered pads 
and blankets to protect furniture, and packing materials were procured, allowing residents 
to safeguard their delicate possessions.  Propane tanks in the area were braced and 
secured, and ten house trailers were set aside as emergency housing in case of homes 
being damaged beyond the limits of habitation.  An ample amount of water was 
contained in tanks and trucks to supply thirty-two of the sixty-two families in the two 
nearest zones to the detonation and their livestock, as well as ten 3-5-kilowatt generators 
to supply electricity in case of power line damage.14 
 The preshot evacuation plan was complicated by the wind.  Before the test, some 
residents would be asked to evacuate the area, while in others they would be advised to 
remain outside their homes until the test was concluded.  Three areas were identified 
around the test site, designated A, B, and C.  Zone A was described as being ?irregularly 
shaped? and covered all homes out to 1.6 miles from ground zero.  These people would 
evacuate the area; their proximity to the site not only left them vulnerable to the shock of 
the blast, but accidental failure of the stemming could lead to their being fatally 
irradiated.  Zone B extended from the outer boundary of Zone A to 2.6 miles of ground 
zero.  These people would be allowed to remain on their property, but were advised to 
                                                                                                                                                 
NTA accession no. NV0338573. 
14 Pre-Shot and Standby Support for Residents Vicinity of Project Dribble ? Salmon Event, 
undated, NTA accession no. NV0096064. 
 
 134 
remain outdoors until told otherwise, in order that they not sustain injury should their 
house or chimney collapse.  Ground motion analyses by the Roland F. Beers firm 
suggested that the region should receive a sharp jolt.  Although the intensity would be 
milder than the shock expected in Zone A, it could be more than enough to turn shelf 
contents and wall decorations into missiles.  Zone C was the downwind sector, and would 
be determined on the day of the shot by the meteorologists.  It incorporated part of Zone 
B and would be extended outward as dictated by wind speed.  Like Zone A, Zone C 
would have to evacuate until it was determined that the stemming had held and 
radioactive leakage was unlikely.15 
 Securing the test site and the surrounding area was the responsibility of private 
and public safety officials.  Private security guards patrolled the site itself, while local 
and state police were slated to man roadblocks and safeguard the homes in the region.  
Radiation safety (rad safety) officers whose job it was to detect and monitor any radiation 
release from the test provided perhaps the most important security service.  Fanning out 
over the area before and after the shot, these personnel were crucial to the safety of the 
site, and could quickly evacuate any endangered civilians in the path of an atmospheric 
release.  The rad safety personnel also monitored the wells and aquifers in the area, 
taking preshot baseline radiation readings for comparison with the postshot conditions.  
Naturally occurring radioactive substances are commonly found in well water in minute 
quantities.  Knowing what already was present would help allay public fears and would 
allow precise detection of any radioactive leakage into these underground water sources, 
should it occur. 
                                                 
15 Operation Order NV-OPO-5-64, 36-37, NTA accession no. NV0096218. 
 
 135 
 With the holes for device emplacement and instrumentation nearing completion, 
final site preparation began in July.  Further delayed by a couple of weeks, Salmon was 
scheduled for September 22, 1964, at 10:00 AM.  Before it could be fired, several 
auxiliary and support structures had to be constructed.  Outside of a 1.7-mile perimeter 
from the Salmon surface ground zero (SGZ), a control point (CP) was established, and at 
a distance of a mile from Site 1A, the Technical Director?s Manned Station (TDMS) was 
constructed.  The detonation party and site reentry teams would be stationed at this latter 
location during the test, and access would be highly restricted during the maximum 
security phase of the test program.  This phase of operations was designated by the arrival 
of the test device at the site, ideally five days before the shot date, and was expected to 
last for three days after the detonation.  This maximum security period could be extended 
as needed.  An observer area 3 ? miles from the shot was developed for media, interested 
civilians, and personnel not essential at the CP or TDMS.  A 150-foot radio repeater 
tower would also be located at the observer?s area along with a support trailer.  An 
electrical facility, under the control of Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company 
(REECO) was constructed at the site, including a transformer and distribution station.16 
 Not far from Site 1A, the assembly area, which was large enough for a trailer, was 
graded, leveled, and surrounded by a security fence.  Here, the Salmon device would be 
prepared following its transportation from LRL.  Nearby were several earth berms 
erected for high explosives handling and assembly for the immediate preshot high 
                                                 
16 Operation Order NV-OPO-5-64, 17, 23-24, NTA accession no. NV0096218; U. S. Atomic 
Energy Commission. Project Dribble (Aug. 1, 1964), 18, NTA accession no. NVO0003295. 
 
 136 
explosive test series.  These areas were tightly controlled, and during the maximum 
security phase would be the most inaccessible parts of the site.17 
 Near the Salmon emplacement hole, a ?bleeddown? plant was built.  This facility 
was crucial to the chamber reentry phase of the operations at the site, which was 
scheduled to begin within several days of the shot.  The bleeddown facility would be 
connected to the well head as the reentry hole was drilled.  Once the shot point was 
reached, any pressurized gases produced by the blast would be diverted to a large 
condensation and holding tank, called a ?blooie tank? at the facility.  The gases would 
then be cooled and scrubbed of as much radioactive material as possible, diluted with air, 
and the resultant efflux released into the atmosphere.  Once pressure had been equalized, 
air would then be injected into the cavity to remove the remainder of the gases, which 
would likewise be scrubbed at the bleeddown plant, diluted, and released.  Air monitors 
surrounded the test site, and any spike in radiation would be immediately noticed.  The 
radioactive contaminants collected in the condensation tanks would then be disposed of.  
Depending on the levels of radioactivity, the waste might be stored onsite or shipped to a 
disposal facility such as Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  After the cavity was purged of hot 
radioactive gas, cameras and sampling equipment could then be lowered into the resultant 
cavity.  One of the goals of the original Dribble program was to find out whether the 
cavity created by a 5kt test could be reused to decouple a 25kt shot.  Reentry and 
inspection of the cavity would suggest whether or not this would indeed be possible.18 
 On August 6, the nineteenth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 
James Reeves, director of AEC public information Henry Vermillion, Hattiesburg office 
                                                 
17 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Appendices ?A?, ?B?, &?C? to AEC 1029/30 ? Salmon 
Event ? Project Dribble (July 20, 1964), 227, NTA accession no. NV0075315. 
18 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Project Dribble, 18, NTA accession no. NV0003295. 
 
 137 
director Leonard ?Buck? Yelinek, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory project director Dr. 
Phillip Randolph, director of AEC project operations William W. Allaire, and Mississippi 
Research and Development Commission director Dr. Robert Dye convened a public 
information meeting at the Baxterville School.  Also at the meeting were Phil Allen of the 
Meteorological Service, Joseph Lang of the USGS, Mel Carter, director of the United 
States Public Health Laboratory in Montgomery, Alabama, Roland F. Beers, and Tom 
McCormick from H&N.  The shot date was a month and a half away, and despite the 
increasing pace of preparations on and offsite, the project administrators displayed a 
relaxed, easygoing attitude during the meeting.  Following Vermillion?s introduction, 
Reeves declined to revisit project information reported by the Hattiesburg American and 
other news sources, deciding instead to concentrate on the impending actions that were 
planned for the area.  He believed that the delay in the Salmon test was ultimately a 
positive situation, and that because of the extra time spent trying to solve the engineering 
and construction problems encountered at the Dribble site, the test would be far safer than 
it might have been otherwise.  Still, the two causes for concern were accidental radiation 
release and ground motion.  Admitting that they expected ?some damage to structures, 
cracked plaster, broken windows, or maybe a chimney or two will fall down,? Reeves 
noted that damage claims would be settled either by repairing the damages or by 
monetary settlements.   
Allaire arrived late to the meeting, having gotten lost en route to the school.  
Reeves jovially remarked that he was certain that Allaire had either gotten lost or had run 
afoul of the local police.  Allaire?s sense of direction might have been wanting, but his 
timing was perfect, as he was to brief the assembled residents on the evacuation plans for 
 
 138 
the forthcoming test.  The plan for September 22 was to evacuate all residents within the 
1.6-mile radius of the test, Zone A, at 7:30 AM.  They were expected to be away from 
their homes for most of shot day, as were those who lived in the downwind sector Zone 
C, which was assumed to be the northern quadrant of the B Zone extending out to five 
miles from SGZ.  The downwind sector would not be specified until the day before the 
test.  All residents would be allowed back as soon as monitoring personnel were certain 
that no radioactive leakage had occurred.  While the evacuation was in effect, helicopters 
would patrol the area in order to detect unauthorized persons and emergency situations, 
like fires.  For their inconvenience, each adult who evacuated these sectors would be paid 
$10, and each child under twelve years old would receive $5.   
The people in the B Zone who were not in the downwind sector would be asked to 
remain outdoors during the shot, but would then be allowed back into their homes.  
Allaire added a suggestion that people who lived in an area from the outside perimeter of 
the B Zone, 2.6 miles, to a farther distance of 4.6 miles, might also want to remain 
outdoors to avoid falling objects indoors; although it was not felt to be necessary, he 
added that it was ?just an extra precaution.?  
Once the all-clear was given, probably in mid-afternoon, public health personnel 
would escort heads of household to their properties to check that their homes were sound.  
Damage would be radioed to the CP, and assessors would be dispatched to survey the 
damage and compare it with preshot surveys that had been made by Holmes & Narver of 
all the dwellings and buildings in the area.  The General Adjustment Bureau, a 
?professional claims adjustment group,? would then handle the paperwork and expedite 
the claims.  The $5,000 limit on individual damage claims was set by the Atomic Energy 
 
 139 
Act, and Allaire doubted that any damage would reach that amount.  One of the reasons 
for this was the preparations for structural bracing made by H&N.  Structures in the A 
and B zones were slated for an aggressive bracing program.  Tom McCormack of H&N 
noted the concern for bracing ?foundations and chimneys and porches and anything that?s 
susceptible to ground motion.?   The residents of the area within a 4.6-mile radius were 
divided into five groups in respect to their distance from the shot point; following the 
meeting they were invited to see the bracing suggestions and plans that H&N had created 
for each structure.  Further contact would be made by H&N with each homeowner before 
the bracing of their homes and other structures.  Finally, Vermillion advised that a public 
observation area had been established at the Dawson Johnson farm located between 
Baxterville and the Tatum Dome with the cryptic statement: ?I don?t think anybody is 
going to see anything because I don?t think there will be anything to see; but 
nevertheless, there will be a place from which you could see something if there were 
anything to see at all.? 
The presentation concluded, and residents were invited to ask questions.  Some 
were expected.  Emergency water for humans and animals would be available nearby if 
needed; livestock was not expected to be heavily affected because the evacuation was of 
short duration; structural bracing would be paid for by the AEC and would not be 
mandatory but was strongly advised; and packing materials would be provided, but it 
would primarily be up to the homeowners to safeguard their household possessions.  
Plastered walls and ceilings could suffer damage, and the AEC would fix or pay for any 
damages.  Structural changes made since the original H&N surveys would be accounted 
for and new surveys made so that buildings could be correctly braced.   
 
 140 
Several questions were surprising.  One concerned the ability of telephones and 
televisions in the area around the site to pick up AEC radio transmissions.  A REECO 
engineer at the meeting explained that the problem was more likely related to the 
televisions rather than the AEC?s equipment.  The REECO engineer was at a loss to 
explain the telephone interference, referring the frustrated resident to the phone company.  
The unnamed resident replied that the phone company was of no help, and that the 
reception of AEC radio traffic was especially annoying during expensive long-distance 
telephone conversations.   
Another question, involving ground motion, prompted a response from Roland 
Beers, whose firm had consulted for the AEC for years and was widely recognized for its 
experience in ground motion prediction and analysis.  Noting a large map of the area, he 
estimated the shock effects in terms of units of gravity (Gs), and the relationship between 
shock forces equivalent to fractional amounts of gravity and damage.  The area within the 
1.6-mile radius was expected to experience forces equivalent to an additional 1 G, if not 
slightly more.  At 4.5 miles, the shock was expected to be 0.1 G, and the shock would 
likely not produce any damage.  Beers was then asked to ?describe in words people 
would understand about how much the ground would shake.?  Beers responded that 
?everyone within this radius of four and one half miles will get a tingling in the toes.  It 
won?t hurt you.  It may be fun.?  For those closer to the test, within 1.6 miles, they 
?would get a jolt which would be comparable to jumping off a curbstone, for example.  
You could, of course, jump off a curbstone and turn your ankle so that it would hurt, but 
that is about the extent of it.  If you landed squarely on your feet, the force of gravity 
 
 141 
would not hurt you, and if you translate this feeling on or into what your house might do, 
perhaps you would have an understanding of how we feel about the predictions.?  
Vermillion also fielded a question regarding future activities at the Dribble site.  
He noted that two ?much considerably smaller? tests were scheduled for the program, and 
that it was not certain they would be fired at the salt dome; if it were to happen, it would 
be much later, and again, they would be far smaller than Salmon.  Once the question and 
answer session ended, those attending were broken down into their groups and invited to 
look over the H&N bracing plans for their structures.19 
A plethora of scientific recording instruments was scheduled for emplacement 
during the Salmon test.  Four deep instrumented holes surrounding Site 1A contained 
some seventy-one instruments belonging to Sandia Corporation designed to record 
subsurface and surface motion.  Vertical accelerometers emplaced at 1,000 and 1,900 feet 
in seven different holes were the responsibility of the Stanford Research Institute.  LRL, 
the stewards of the Salmon device, would also be monitoring crystal pressure gauges 
emplaced within the salt to measure the stresses on the salt from the blast.  The United 
States Coast and Geodetic Survey was responsible for several seismic stations.  Linear 
seismograph arrays stretched east and south from the shot point, consisting of six 
recorders at distances ranging between ? and 4 miles.  Other stations in the area were 
located at the Baxterville oilfield some five miles to the southwest, the Pontiac Eastern 
Refinery three miles north of Purvis, and one each at Purvis, Wiggins, Ellisville, 
Beaumont Prentiss, and Tylertown.  Another station was located at Bogalusa, Louisiana.  
Several other stations were operated by the USCGS about seventy-five miles from the 
                                                 
19 Transcript of Dribble Public Safety Meeting, 7:30 PM, August 6, 1964, Baxterville School, 
Baxterville Mississippi,  NTA accession no. NV0017777. 
 
 142 
shot point, and one of their research ships operated a submarine seismograph off the coast 
of the Yucatan Peninsula to record the Salmon shot.   
The USGS operated three seismic stations at a range of seventy-five miles from 
the SGZ.  DARPA operated five seismic stations that would actively monitor the Salmon 
test, and included Vernal, Utah, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, McMinnville, Tennessee, Baker, 
Oregon, and Payson, Arizona.  Geotech Corporation, acting under the supervision of 
AFTAC, operated some forty seismic stations located more than 1,200 miles from the 
Dribble site.  Although seismological development was the primary goal of Salmon, other 
nonseismological programs would be conducted with Salmon, including detection of any 
visual and photographic effects of the shot, electromagnetic research, piezoelectric and 
solid state changes in rock strata, and seismic noise research.20 
In addition to these programs, many others were interested in monitoring Salmon.  
Seismographic stations from around the world anxiously awaited the shot, including 
several within the Soviet Union.  Newspapers openly reported the proposed shot date and 
time, as well as the device yield, depth of emplacement, and precise geographical 
location.  In a surprising break from typical atomic testing secrecy, Salmon was a public 
spectacle ? at least as public as an underground test could be.   
Seismic departments at colleges and universities around the globe looked forward 
to the test.  Instead of waiting for unpredictable earthquakes, an expected seismic source 
of a known magnitude would allow further calibration and synchronization between 
stations.  One of these independent stations was located some 100 miles from Dribble at 
Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.  The small Jesuit college had benefited from the 
order?s attention to seismology after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as a service to 
                                                 
20 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Project Dribble, 12-13, NTA accession no. NV0003295.  
 
 143 
humanity; it also benefited from the presence of its one-man seismology department and 
innovator, Father Louis Eisele.  Eisele?s contributions to the field included the 
development of an electronically-coupled seismograph that recorded on paper and an ink 
that would not clog the recording pen due to fungal growth.  This replaced the standard 
method of using mechanical seismographs that recorded on photographic paper.  In 1962, 
Spring Hill College joined the World Wide Network of Standard Seismic Systems 
(WWNSSS), adding six more machines for Eisele to care for; they were of the older 
photographic type that Eisele had replaced with his development in 1952 of paper and ink 
machines.  Eisele was the first to report to the world the tremendous magnitude 8.6 
earthquake in Prince William Sound in Alaska on March 27, 1964; the event was so 
strong it nearly broke his recording equipment.  As a technologically advanced seismic 
station, the data recorded at Spring Hill College would be particularly valuable ? 
especially as the Louann Salt that spawned the Tatum Dome extended deep beneath the 
college.21 
During August, invitations went out to local officials and media personnel to 
witness the Salmon shot.  A press brief from the AEC to news reporters and editors 
cautioned: ?news media representatives should be aware that they probably will not see 
any effects of the detonation at shot time.  It is probable that there will be noticeable 
ground motion at the observer area which is located about three and one-half miles from 
                                                 
21 Spring Hill College (Mobile, AL), ?News Release,? Obituary notice for Fr. Louis Eisele, SJ, 
died Oct. 3, 1988, Spring Hill College Archives, Faculty folder ? Eisele, Fr. S.J.; Times-Picayune (New 
Orleans, LA), Oct. 31, 1976; Everett Larguier, S.J., ed., Seismology at Spring Hill College  (Mobile, AL: 
Spring Hill College Press, 1990), 4-7.  All in Spring Hill College Archives.  
 
 144 
the explosion point.?  The brief also mentioned the evacuation and compensation of local 
residents and the structural bracing and damage compensation plans.22   
Hattiesburg mayor Claude F. Pittman and city engineer Pat Patterson received 
identical letters from Jim Reeves:  
 
As you know, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department 
of Defense and the United States Atomic Energy Commission are scheduled to 
detonate a nuclear device deep underground at the Commission?s Project Dribble 
site near Hattiesburg on Tuesday, September 22.  We would like to take this 
opportunity to invite you to participate in Project Dribble as an official observer. 
We would like you to be aware, however, that we do not anticipate any 
visual effects to result from the detonation.  It is also possible that there will be 
delays on an hour-to-hour or day-to-day basis due to unfavorable weather 
conditions, technical considerations, or for other reasons.  We will inform you in 
advance of any delay in the schedule if time permits, though this may not be 
possible in the case of last minute changes. 
A Vela Uniform Program-Project Dribble briefing has been scheduled for 
official observers and news media representatives on Monday, September 21, 
beginning at 7:30 p.m. ...At that time representatives of the Department of 
Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, 
and associated agencies will discuss various aspects of Project Dribble and its 
relationship to the Vela Uniform Program. 
Transportation from Hattiesburg to the Project Dribble site on September 
22 will be by chartered bus.?The time of departure will be announced at the 
Monday briefing.  Operational considerations do not permit the use of private 
vehicles. 
We hope that your schedule will permit you to participate in Project 
Dribble, and we would appreciate hearing from you by September 4 if you plan to 
attend, or if you will not be able to attend?. 23  
 
 
 Senator Stennis received his personal invitation from AEC Chairman Glenn 
Seaborg on August 28:  
 
                                                 
22 Press briefing statement, Aug. 7, 1964, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-8 1963-67, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC.  
23 James E. Reeves to Claude F. Pittman and C. B. Patterson, Aug. 12, 1964, folder 9, box 133: 
Commissioner C.B. Patterson: Atomic Energy Commission ? Project Dribble (1963-1964). M208 
MCAUSM. 
 
 145 
As you have been informed by advance copies of the press releases, the 
SALMON event of Project DRIBBLE has been scheduled for September 22, 
1964.  This experiment is a 5-KT nuclear detonation at a depth of 2700 feet in the 
Tatum Salt Dome near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 
Since this event is an unclassified Department of Defense-Atomic Energy 
Commission seismic experiment, appropriate public information activities and 
announcements are planned before and after the detonation.  News media 
representatives and local residents will be invited to observe the surface effects of 
the detonation from a designated observer area. 
Although venting of radioactive debris is not expected, safety 
considerations require precautions against this possibility.  The wind must be 
steady and from a direction which would carry any radioactive release toward a 
closely prescribed, previously evacuated sector.  A delay of several days is 
possible in obtaining the desired conditions for your optimum safety. 
I would like to invite you to observe this event on September 22 or as soon 
thereafter as weather conditions permit?. 24 
 
As experts stated, there would be little to see because of the Salmon test.  Persons 
looking for the effects of the detonation might see a toppled chimney or two.  Looking 
elsewhere, as Winfred Montcreif did, one would see the effects all around the region.  A 
photographer for the Hattiesburg American, Montcreif compiled a collection of 
photographs of the events.  Now housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and 
History in Jackson, the photos offer a window into the events at the site and around the 
area.  In one photograph, Martha Saul, four years old at the time, peeks around a heavy 
timber bracing the chimney on her house.  Additional lumber propped up the timber, and 
was firmly anchored in place.  Heavy wire further secured the bracing to the chimney and 
the house.  In other photographs, Martha appears beside her mother, who is carrying her 
younger brother.  The sturdiness of the bracing work added by H&N contrasts with the 
                                                 
24 Glenn Seaborg to Stennis, Aug. 28, 1964, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-8 1963-67, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 146 
braces on the boy?s legs ? he may have suffered from polio or another disease.  The 
family looks otherwise robust and well-kept.25 
Though no record is immediately available, some time in early or middle 
September, a convoy from LRL made its way down the narrow roads to the test site.  
Within the convoy was a truck carrying the Salmon device.  It parked at the assembly 
area and technicians inspected the device after its transit from the stockpile to its ultimate 
destination.26  Diagnostic equipment was attached to test whether the sensitive 
components in the device were functional, and the nuclear components were further 
checked.  Salmon was a complex machine; despite Jim Reeves?s feelings about extra time 
equaling extra safety, it also meant extra money.  Salmon was to be emplaced at the 
bottom of a 2,700-foot-deep shaft that would then be back-filled with pea gravel and 
concrete ? if it failed to function when the firing switch was triggered, it would be 
practically irretrievable, and would then represent a significant waste of material and 
money.  Once Salmon was thoroughly examined, it was attached to the lifting equipment 
and lowered to the bottom of Station 1A. 
Salmon?s pedigree is still top-secret.  It was not a weapon ? although at one time 
it may well have been.  It was an oversized seismic charge, much the same as bundles of 
dynamite were used as seismic charges before newer high explosives became common.  
At the heart of the Salmon device was a core of radioactive material, either plutonium or 
highly enriched uranium. There was no assembly line for nuclear test devices, only 
                                                 
25 Winfred Montcreif Photograph Collection, PI/94.0005.0195, PI/94.0005.0199, PI/94.0005.0200, 
Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi (hereafter cited as MDAH). 
26 This most likely occurred on September 11 or 12, although no specific information on the 
transportation is available at present.  A 1966 report on Salmon notes that device emplacement began on 
September 13.  See U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event) (Las Vegas: Nevada Operations Office, July 1966), 33, NTA accession no. NV0004351.   
 
 147 
weapons were produced in quantities.   In April 1960, the AEC realized that the testing 
moratorium would not become permanent, and that it was important to have devices on 
hand to resume testing immediately upon its cessation.  This led to an examination of 
America?s nuclear stockpile for older weapons that could be converted to test devices.  
Two fit the requirements: the Mark VI and Mark VII fission weapons.  The Mark VI was 
thirty-nine inches in diameter and operationally yielded 30-60kt.  It remained in the 
United States stockpile from 1951 until it was phased out in 1962.   
The Mark VII was twenty-seven inches in diameter, and was America?s first truly 
multipurpose warhead.  It could be configured in several ways by varying the high 
explosive detonators and nuclear cores.  The interchangeability of different critical 
components gave it a wide range of yields, from 1 to 70kt.  Although it remained in the 
stockpile from 1952 until 1967 and was still an active weapon in the inventory, older 
models of the Mk VII had been withdrawn from active service before 1964.  The 17 ?-
inch diameter of the Station 1A hole seems problematic when compared to the 27-inch 
diameter of the Mk VII; although this is speculation, it is probable that much of this 10-
inch difference would be accommodated by the size of the smaller of the interchangeable 
pits and explosive assemblies, and the ballistic casing, fins, and other components 
necessary in weapons system would be unnecessary in a seismic test device.  Therefore 
the Salmon device was most likely an older Mk VII tactical nuclear bomb, stripped of its 
weapons components and recycled into an atomic seismic charge.27 
Whereas a bomb relies on internal barometric switches, radar altimeter triggers, or 
impact switches to detonate the high explosive lenses that initiate the compression and 
                                                 
27 Ogle, Return to Testing, 173; Chuck Hansen, U. S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History 
(Arlington: Aerofax, 1988), 131-38. 
 
 148 
fission processes, the Salmon device would be dependent on a system designed by 
EG&G to fire the bomb accurately.  The detonation signal would be sent via cables from 
the surface, and the firing station itself would be triggered by radio, allowing the firing 
party to be a safe distance from SGZ.  The device required a strong shell, as it would be 
topped with tons of gravel and concrete; it was encased in a 2.32 meter (7.6 feet) long, 40 
centimeter (15.75 inch) diameter cylinder.28  
On September 13, 1964, Salmon was hoisted from its truck and lowered into the 
Station 1A hole.  Slowly dropped down the shaft, the device was constantly subjected to 
diagnostic tests via its attached cables when, at a depth of 1,200 feet, the device 
registered an undisclosed malfunction.  It was retrieved to the surface for analysis.  The 
shot date, September 22, was scrapped, and a new shot date was set for September 28.  
The Salmon device was fully lowered to the bottom of the shaft on September 21, and 
was finally emplaced and the shaft stemmed with 600 feet of concrete poured on top of 
the device, and the rest of the hole filled with pea gravel.  Despite the apparent safety of 
the stemming procedures, the Hattiesburg American questioned whether the Dribble site 
might become an enormous shotgun if the force of the blast could not be contained.29 
Salmon was the first atomic test to be conducted east of the Mississippi River.  
This was not its only distinction: Salmon became the most postponed nuclear shot in the 
history of American nuclear testing.  The delay caused by the diagnostic readings during 
the canister?s descent to the bottom of the emplacement hole merely added a few days to 
                                                 
28 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event.)  (Las Vegas, Nevada Operations Office, 1966), 31, NTA accession number NV0018934. 
29 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Salmon Event ? Project Dribble AEC 1029/30  (July 17, 
1964), 2, NTA accession no. NV0075308; Hattiesburg American, Sept.11, 1964, from subject file Tatum 
Salt Dome, McCain Archives, University of Southern Mississippi (hereafter referred to as TSD-
MCAUSM). 
 
 149 
the schedule.  It was late summer in Mississippi, and the predictable wind patterns failed 
to materialize.  Time after time, Salmon was postponed because of unfavorable winds.  
One of the main problems lay in the method used to predict the winds ? the forecasts 
originated almost a full twenty-four hours before the conditions were expected.  The AEC 
still clung to September 28 as the date for Salmon.  But September 28 came and went, as 
did the next attempt, September 30.  The winds refused to cooperate. 
Far from the Dribble site, well into the Gulf of Mexico, towering cumulonimbus 
clouds formed and sustained themselves on a diet of warm water and high pressure aloft.  
Growing in strength, they reached hurricane force by September 30; its given name was 
Hilda.  She intensified rapidly, almost doubling her wind speed over twenty-four hours 
from 80 miles per hour to 150 miles per hour on October 1, 1964.  Sparking an 
evacuation of more than 50,000 people along the Gulf coast, Hilda eschewed the Texas 
coast in favor of central Louisiana, making landfall near Morgan City.  Within a week, 
Hilda claimed at least thirty-eight lives, twenty-one resulting from a single tornado that 
hit La Rose, Louisiana.  As she died out, Hilda hugged the Georgia-Florida border, 
flooding the region.  But in her wake, disturbed winds continued to plague Salmon.30 
 Hilda was a catastrophe for the residents of the central Gulf Coast and the 
planners of the Salmon test ? and just as soon as Hilda exited the scene, there was another 
tropical storm to contend with.  On October 13, Tropical Storm Isbell was reported to be 
threatening Cuba; ironically American hurricane tracking aircraft were prohibited from 
close monitoring of the storm because of the deterioration of American/Cuban relations.  
Despite Isbell?s distance from Mississippi, she stirred the atmosphere over the southeast.  
Furthermore, the unpredictable nature of tropical weather meant that it was possible that 
                                                 
30 Laurel (Mississippi) Leader-Call, Sept. 30-Oct. 5, 1964. 
 
 150 
Isbell could suddenly make a beeline for the test site.  As far as the seismic teams were 
concerned, Hilda and Isbell were noisemakers.  The large waves generated by the storms 
pounding on the beach created a seismic cacophony that prevented a clear reading of the 
signals generated by the test.  Disturbed winds and high waves meant that the test would 
have to be delayed.31 
 Salmon?s firing date was delayed six days because of the technical problems with 
the device.  Then it was a wind delay.  On September 30, another wind delay.  Then 
October 2 ? a wind delay.  Then the fifth, the sixth and eighth - postponements followed 
frustrating postponements.  Salmon passed the previous record for test delays ? twenty-
nine days ? on October 19.  Twelve shot days had come and gone by Monday, October 
19.  Eleven times, the Weather Bureau forecast that the winds would cooperate and blow 
south to north at around five miles per hour.  Twice, the Mississippi Highway Patrol set 
up their barricades, and the residents of the area were prompted to leave their homes.  
Twice they were given reimbursement chits, and twice they were paid.  A one-shot, one-
evacuation test program was promising to become a healthy windfall for some larger 
families.  Meanwhile, men in hardhats and khakis lounged in the sun around the 
observation points, eating Eskimo pies, sandwiches, and Honey Buns, and consuming 
coffee and cold drinks.  On October 8 and 11, the observation areas were populated, and 
people left muttering.  News reporters with television cameras waited, and nothing 
newsworthy happened.32   
Tuesday, October 20, was again unsuitable for the shot ? the wind was coming 
from the wrong direction.  It was still refusing to come out of the south around the big 
                                                 
31 Ibid., Oct. 13-14, 1964; Hattiesburg American, Sept. 30, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
32 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 9, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
 
 151 
Bermuda High, instead consistently blowing in the opposite direction: north to south.  In 
a decision reminiscent of Teller?s and Starbird?s decision to save money at NTS by 
carrying out shallower tests in order to spare the atomic testing budget, the meteorologists 
quickly put together a plan that would assume a north wind.  Instead of the residents in 
the northern sector of the B zone being evacuated, it would be the corresponding southern 
sector.  There was a problem though: to the south of Dribble lay Biloxi and Gulfport.  
Should the worst happen at Dribble, those populated areas could be irradiated.  If a 
contaminated plume rose high enough and did a quick turn to the south-southwest, Slidell 
and New Orleans could be affected.  On the other hand, the device would not remain 
viable forever.  The AEC and LRL did not want to leave an expensive 5kt device at the 
bottom of a hole, but the testing budget only allowed for certain expenditures for 
personnel, materiel, and compensation for local residents.  Developing a new set of 
protocols for the experiment was the expedient solution, and it worked.33  The rest of the 
week looked increasingly favorable.  The new Zone C was designated on Wednesday, 
and was prepared for evacuation the following morning.  At 7:30 AM on the morning of 
Thursday, October 22, for the third time the evacuation of Zones A and C began.  Aerial 
patrols took off to secure the region, and were joined by sampling and observation 
aircraft.  Rad safety personnel took up their stations, ready to sound the alarm if 
necessary.  Around the world, seismographs awaited the first motion of Mississippi?s 
premiere atomic blast. 
 SGZ was deserted, of course, although the signs of human presence were 
everywhere.  The ground was crossed in several directions by cables connecting buried 
                                                 
33 Public information statement, Project Dribble Joint Office of Information, Oct. 20, 1964, NTA 
accession no. NV0326663. 
 
 152 
and surface instruments to recording trailers and telemetry equipment.  Temporary plank 
walkways spared shoes and socks from summer mud, and a sign warned of an explosive 
hazard 2,700 feet below.  A large Confederate flag flew overhead, beneath which an 
unknown airman had reenlisted several days before.  The flag was not raised by locals, 
but by the imported Dribble personnel, in part as a good-natured joke, and as a salute to 
the local people, upon whose hospitality they had come to depend.  Other souvenirs 
marked Site 1A, including a sign bearing a defiant Southern slogan left ?by an AEC 
wag.?  Just before 10:00 AM, the countdown began, and for the first time, did not stop.  
At 10:00 AM on October 22, 1964, keeping in spirit with the flag and the sign, at the 
Dribble test site near Purvis, Mississippi, the South did rise again, by approximately four 
inches.34  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
34 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 9, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM; Mississippi Press-Register, Oct. 23, 
1964; Bates, Gaskell, Rice, Geophysics in the Affairs of Man, 203-204. 
 
 153 
Chapter Seven 
?Shoot That Damn Thing? 
 
 
 Claudette Ezell is laughing in the photographs, obviously enjoying the attention of 
the photographer and reporter.  The October 1, 1964, story in the Hattiesburg American 
focused on the preparations for the Salmon test, already postponed three times.  Mrs. 
Ezell recounted her concern for the safety of her plaster of Paris plaques ? a hobby she 
began after undergoing cancer surgery.  More than a thousand hand-painted plaster 
plaques, many with religious motifs, hung on the walls of her house, in her father?s corn 
crib, and on the walls of the Gulf Caf? and Service Station in Baxterville, which she 
operated.  Residing a little less than three miles from SGZ, she was determined to leave 
the area when shot day eventually came, despite there being no official need for her to 
evacuate.  She simply figured that her business would be nonexistent that day.  She 
showed the reporter the chemically-treated cloth patches that the AEC distributed to area 
residents; a heavy dose of radiation would turn them purple.  As she explained, her 
laughter masked fear of the unknown results of the impending test.  One mile closer to 
the test site, Martha Saul?s mother waited for the activity at the site to conclude so that 
her husband would hook up her new electric clothes dryer.  Her fragile possessions were 
packed in padded crates, and she accepted the frequent visits from monitoring personnel 
sampling water from her well: ?we?re used to being pestered.?1 
A resident of Lamar County invited to join the group of official observers located 
close to the test at the Saucier farm demurred, saying: ?If it comes off as quietly as the 
                                                 
1 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 1, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
 
 154 
AEC says it will, there won?t be anything to see, and if it doesn?t work that way I don?t 
want to be around.?2   
 Others eager to see what they could see were repeatedly disappointed.  One 
mother was overheard saying ?they?re not going to shoot that damn thing,? as she 
rounded up her brood and loaded them into her car.  Her identity unknown, she was likely 
one of the many evacuees who left their homes early on shot day, and returned once the 
test was cancelled.  Sunburns and large nests of fire ants were the immediate hazards at 
the observation area, where reporters and civil defense personnel mingled, families 
picnicked, and the AEC-run canteen experienced a curious lack of interest in their 
barbecue beef sandwiches.  Before the wind protocol change was approved on October 
20, it seemed that they would never ?shoot that damn thing.?3 
Mrs. Clifford Jones wrote from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Hattiesburg Mayor  
Paul Grady to inquire about the status of the tests, and expressing her outrage:   
  
I read in Closer Up ? (a small periodical from Florida) that our U. S. 
Government had made an announcement of the decision to explode a nuclear 
bomb near Hattiesburg Miss on Sept. 22, 1964. 
Not one word of this have I read in any of our newspapers or the Wall St. 
Journal or N.Y. Tribune. 
I am curious to see if it was done.  Do you mind answering and let me 
know? 
Never have I heard of such a thing and I am furious.  What are we coming 
to on this earth?.... 
Our actions now are worse than the Carpet Baggers times.  That [?] 
Amendment is not part of the U. S. Constitution?  
I want to God to bless you [sic] all thru this trying experience which 
Washington has thrust on you?. 4 
                                                 
2 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 8, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
3 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 13, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
4 Mrs. Clifford B. Jones to Mayor Paul Grady, Sep. 23, 1964, folder 1, box 29: Mayor Paul Grady.  
This letter was damaged by a flood at the USM Archives, and though it was photocopied as quickly as 
possible, it had deteriorated to the point where it was barely legible in most areas, and completely illegible 
in others.: Atomic Energy Commission (1962-1972; undated), M208 MCAUSM.   
 
 155 
 
Mrs. Jones?s connection to Hattiesburg is unknown, although it reveals her lack of 
contact with the area, where newspaper stories kept close tabs on the development of the 
Salmon test.  Despite the general illegibility of her letter due to the ravages of a flood in 
the archives where it was kept, she saw the federal government?s presence at the Dribble 
site as an outside intrusion, and a crime against the people in the region.  Her outrage is 
notable for the contrast with the sentiments of those living in the affected area near the 
test site.      
The general consensus among locals concerning the Salmon test was the desire to 
get it over with.  Despite the holiday mood at the observation stations, the fear of the 
unknown continued among those living around the test site.  For many of them, their 
lives were on hold until the test took place.  Metaphorically, it was like hearing the 
distant thunder of a slowly approaching violent storm, and anxiously waiting to see what 
debris needed to cleaned up afterwards ? except that this particular storm had been 
thundering for a month, and the first raindrop had yet to fall.  It was annoying.  
Flooding, a hurricane, device problems, and uncooperative winds had stalled 
Salmon for thirty days from its planned shot date; given more time, the fire ants might 
have found their way onto this list.  The AEC sought to control them with the same 
amount of success they had with conducting the test.  There was nothing in the air that 
marked October 22 as ?the day? ? apart from favorable winds.  Evacuees and the still 
curious assembled once again at the observation station that Thursday morning.  Advised 
by loudspeaker that the countdown continued and that conditions remained favorable, 
news cameramen reexamined their equipment, official observers and evacuees left the 
 
 156 
precious shade of trees, and all focused their attention on the test site three and a half 
miles away.  The countdown reached zero, and a cloud of dust rose into the air over the 
Dribble site.   
 The energy equivalent of 5,300 tons of TNT exploded at the bottom of Station 
1A.  The intense heat instantly converted a large mass of salt into ionized plasma, while a 
shock wave formed and propagated outward.  The shock hammered the cement stemming 
plug, which held, causing a spherical cavity to form in less than a second.  The ground 
bounded upward and then fell back, ending up roughly four inches above where it had 
been.  More important, the shock wave shook the entire salt dome.  As the blast forced 
the ground upward, it also pushed the enormous finger of salt downwards, and because it 
was not at the radial center of the dome, it caused the enormous saline protuberance to 
vibrate.  Within a few seconds of detonation, the plasma cooled to form salt vapor.  
Fractured and molten material fell to the bottom of the chamber, forming a rubble pile of 
vaporized device components and molten salt.   
 All over and around the test site, seismographs recorded the motion and were 
promptly knocked over.  Wooden housings for the sensitive USCGS recorders leaned 
forward precariously, threatening to dump thousands of dollars worth of machinery onto 
the ground.  At least one was saved by its bulk, wedging it into place so that it stuck 
precariously out of its box.  At the zero point, anything not staked into the ground was 
thrown up into the air - the vertical surface displacement was thirty centimeters, or 11.8 
inches - falling to earth shortly afterward.  The expected acceleration at SGZ was 10G, 
 
 157 
while later measurements recorded acceleration almost three times as strong: 28 G.  Dust 
filled the air.5 
 The dust was the only thing to see, until the ground shock reached the manned 
positions and the observation area.  Several noticeable ground waves propagated 
outward, lasting for nearly three minutes.  Cars rocked on their springs and equipment 
trailers shook.  The vibrations raced out in all directions: ?three good tremors? rocked 
Purvis; the Hattiesburg American building swayed; numerous other locations also 
reported the ground motion.  Clearly the ?tingle in the toes? that was expected several 
miles away from the blast was far more perceptible than first thought.6 
 Twenty-five seconds after the blast, the shock wave reached Father Eisele?s 
seismographs at Spring Hill College.  Examining the data, Eisele said that Salmon 
?recorded comparably to a major earthquake.?  Seconds later, the shock wave reached the 
University of Michigan?s experimental seismic stations: at the university?s Botanical 
Gardens the blast registered a 6.0 on the Richter scale; at its Fulton county station in Ohio 
it registered as a 5.8.  Salmon was far stronger than anyone had expected; its effects were 
unanticipated.  Later radiochemical analysis of chamber debris verified that the device 
performed as specified with the expected yield, but shook the earth like a larger device.  
The reason this occurred was because of the unique geology that allowed the Tatum 
Dome to form.  Recalling the process of diapirism, the hot, fluid salt forced its way 
towards the surface from several miles below.  If one mentally removes the surrounding 
strata from above the Louann salt bed and around the dome, one is left with a long, 
inverted teardrop-shaped finger of salt, connected to the Louann bed.  The top 
                                                 
5 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission.  NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event.)  (Las Vegas, Nevada Operations Office, 1966), 28,  NTA accession no. NV0018934. 
6 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 22, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
 
 158 
mushrooms out, though not dramatically.  The sedimentary strata pierced by the salt 
diapir are not rigid like stone, but are more like pudding.  If one sticks a finger in water, 
gelatin, or pudding, and wiggles it quickly, the wave effect will readily be seen.  At the 
immediate area, a vertical bound and several rebounds were recorded.  But the diapir also 
vibrated horizontally, causing a sympathetic ?sloshing? of the surrounding ground that 
amplified the seismic effects.7 
 No underground radioactivity escaped from the Salmon explosion.  The chamber 
created by the blast contained all of the fission products deep underground.  Still, safety 
protocols dictated that a full sampling sweep be conducted to make certain that an 
unknown fissure somewhere was not spewing radioactive gases into the atmosphere.  
Fifteen minutes after the shot, a helicopter transported personnel back to SGZ, to take 
readings from several devices emplaced there.  At noon, USPHS personnel began 
escorting residents from the evacuated areas to their homes to check for damage.   
 Claudette Ezelle received good news: her treasured plaques survived.  More than 
three miles from the shot, her home and business were subjected to a strong shock, but 
her plaques remained where she had left them.  On the other extreme, two miles from 
Station 1A, Horace Burge returned to a mess.  Burge, a fifty-one-year-old tung tree 
farmer, his severely asthmatic wife, and four children lived in a three-room frame house.  
For all intents and purposes, it was uninhabitable ? the fireplace and chimney were 
destroyed, his refrigerator jolted open, dumping food from the shelves, and bricks and 
debris littered the floors.  In addition, his pipes burst, spewing water all over the kitchen 
                                                 
7 David E. Willis and Phillip L. Jackson, Collection and Analysis of Seismic Wave Propagation 
Data: Final Report (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1966), 47; Hattiesburg American, Oct. 22, 1964, 
TSD-MCAUSM. 
 
 159 
floor.  Winfred Montcreif?s photographs for the Hattiesburg American show a crew-cut 
Burge clad in shirt and striped overalls dejectedly surveying the damage in his home.8 
 Most of the damage around the site was slight, with cracked masonry and plaster 
most commonly reported.  Damage complaints flooded into the AEC?s Hattiesburg 
office; within three days, 205 had been lodged.  By November 17, some 700 complaints 
were reported and 267 claims filed.9  At the beginning of December, the AEC officially 
reported that the Hattiesburg office recorded 835 complaints, and 358 claims for damages 
were filed.  Of these, 97 had already been settled.  Because the process was slower than 
some would have liked, residents of the affected area, which spread well beyond the five-
mile radius initially predicted, were rapidly growing impatient with the AEC.  Along with 
their anxiety over being paid in a timely fashion, they were critical of the AEC?s 
?clamming up.?  Before the Salmon test, news and announcements were issued almost 
constantly from the Hattiesburg Joint Information Office; after the test, information was 
simply not as forthcoming.  Official announcements concerning damage complaints and 
claims were not forthcoming until December 1, almost six weeks after the test, and then a 
week later on December 8.  The next AEC announcements related to the reentry 
operations at the site.  By March 25, 1966, 1,189 claims were filed for damages from 
distances as far away from the site as twenty-five miles.  These claims totaled 
$2,178,713.78.  Of these claims, the majority, 1,018, were settled for a total amount of 
$547,498.03.  Four claims, well in excess of the $5,000 limit, required approval by 
                                                 
8 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 22, 23, TSD-MCAUSM. 
9 The difference between complaints and claims was that a complaint would typically be 
telephoned in for investigation as to whether the damage was pre-existing or had been caused by the test.  
A claim involved paperwork and was considered for reimbursement. 
 
 160 
Congress for a total of $44,288.73.10   
The disparity between the amounts claimed and settled was appreciable: roughly 
25 percent.  Despite the H&N?s structural surveys and bracing, certain aspects of the 
area?s structures could not be thoroughly inspected.  Buildings that seemed solid could 
actually have been on the verge of collapse due to a number of factors, including termite 
or other insect damage, weak foundations, or poor construction, and regardless of the 
severity of the shock, the structure would suffer damage.  In some cases, complaints and 
claims were filed for questionable reasons.  Lavern P. Smith wrote a complaint to the 
AEC concerning a strange event:  
 
I think that you all want to know everything that happened during the 
explosion so just think you should know this.  My wife and I were sitting in the 
car listening to the radio, and as soon as the blast was over & the car stopped 
shaking we shut the radio off and I stepped on the starter and all of the water in 
my battery just boiled all over the place and the battery was dead as it could be.  
Please don?t think I want a battery because I don?t as I already have one.  I don?t 
know what could of [sic] happened because it was an almost new battery.  I just 
thought you would want to know.   
 
Frank Ingram?s reply from the Joint Office of Information was polite, but insisted that the 
battery trouble was a coincidence, and not directly linked to the Salmon test.11   
The AEC and Roland Beers clearly erred in their predictions of ground motion 
caused by the test.  The shock wave was stronger and propagated farther outward than 
anticipated.  Following the test, some residents were optimistic that test damage could 
benefit them.  The Hattiesburg American reported that a Baxterville woman said of her 
                                                 
10 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 26, Nov. 17, Dec. 1, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM; U.S Atomic Energy 
Commission.  NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon Event), 54, 128, NTA 
accession no. NV0018934. 
192 Lavern P. Smith to AEC, Oct. 22, 1962, NTA accession no. NV0016539; Frank L. Ingram to 
Lavern P. Smith, Oct. 28, 1964, NTA accession no. NV0016538. 
 
 161 
house, ?I was hoping the whole thing would fall down.?12  A $5,000 house could be an 
improvement over an older structure, especially in 1964 dollars.  As 1965 began, the 
presence of an atomic test site in the Piney Woods became increasingly considered a 
nuisance.  Patriotic or not, the residents of the area felt growing resentment towards 
government agencies that had the power to dislocate them at will, threaten their homes 
and lives, and delay payment on legitimate damages to private property.  The initial 
excitement was wearing off, the metaphoric storm had passed, and the aftermath was 
frustrating and tedious. 
While adjusters worked over the mass of claims following the Salmon test, 
personnel at the site began working towards reentering the shot cavity.  With shots Sand 
and Tar on indefinite hold, efforts concentrated on the long and hazardous process of 
investigating the products of the 5.3kt blast.  Initially the plan was to begin reentry a day 
or two after the shot. This was soon discarded, as there was no way to know the pressure 
of the gases in the chamber, although it was certain that they would still be extremely hot.  
Salt retains heat ? a property that allowed the salt diapirs to form.  By opening up the 
cavity, hot, pressurized radioactive gas could conceivably overwhelm the bleeddown 
facility and escape into the atmosphere.  This would be an environmental disaster, 
requiring an emergency evacuation of people living around the dome.  All of the 
radioactive materials created by the test were trapped deep within the dome, and they 
were not going anywhere.  Rad safety monitoring continued all around the site, and by 
holding the known contaminated gasses and materials in the dome, radiation leak 
detection would be far more accurate.  Chamber reentry would bring contaminated matter 
to the surface, potentially affecting readings.   
                                                 
12 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 22, 1964, TSD-MCAUSM. 
 
 162 
A work order issued on January 3, 1965 named REECO and the Oklahoma firm 
Fenix and Scisson (F&S) to perform new tasks at Station 1A, with REECO assuming the 
duty of radiation monitoring.  Almost a quarter million dollars in contracts was allocated 
for private firms, with $175,000 dollars available immediately and intended for the actual 
chamber reentry, rad safety, and ?Contingency Engineering and Construction.?  Once 
again, Big Chief Incorporated, also from Oklahoma, drilled into the salt dome.  
Contracted before Salmon, the firm?s workers began the task of drilling a hole called 
Postshot 1 parallel to and thirty feet distant from Station 1A.  The work was slow, despite 
Big Chief?s experience with the Tatum Dome, due to radiation safety concerns.  Initiation 
of a second hole, Postshot 2, began in February about 105 feet away from Postshot 1, in 
order to allow a different method of material assessment.  The second hole was planned 
to be sunk to 2,900 feet, where sample cores could then be retrieved.  The hole would 
then be filled to the 2,200-foot level and an angled shaft dug from that depth at twenty-
five degrees to enter the top of the chamber, allowing further sample collection from the 
area near the top of the void.  Angled drilling, or ?whipstocking,? was a procedure 
perfected in the oilfields that allowed drilling rigs to explore promising pockets of oil and 
gas that were not accessible by drilling straight down.13 
 Postshot 1 drilling started, or was ?spudded in,? on January 2, 1965.  Carefully 
checking for leaks in the new casing via television cameras lowered periodically into the 
hole, the Big Chief drilling team slowly closed the distance to their target.  At 2,655 feet, 
drillers detected radioactivity, and at a foot deeper, high levels of gamma radiation 
                                                 
13 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event.)  (Las Vegas, Nevada Operations Office, 1966), 55-56, NTA accession no. NV0018934; James E. 
Reeves, Work Authorization Number 1 ? Station 1A Re-entry, Project Dribble PPB:NLP-2062 (Jan. 3, 
1966), NTA accession no. NV0096068. 
 
 163 
showed that the cavity was close.  Drilling at a speed of roughly a foot every half hour, 
they reached the Salmon chamber on March 4, at a depth of 2,660 feet.  Remote probing 
showed that Salmon had created an alien world, resembling Venus more than Earth.  
Nearly four and a half months had passed since the blast, yet the chamber temperature 
was a nearly uniform 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Highly acidic fluid accumulated in the 
bottom of the shaft where it met the chamber; a boiling concoction of concentrated 
hydrochloric acid, brine, and ferric chloride.  This delayed the chamber interior survey 
with a television camera until the fluid could be removed.   
Despite the temperature, a partial vacuum existed in the chamber; the bleeddown 
plant kept the pressure at a steady level, 310 millibars, while the monitoring technicians 
performed a cavity gas sampling operation.  Radiation levels averaged 100 milliroentgens 
per hour, with higher levels encountered at the bottom of the chamber and in a layer some 
three feet into the salt.  Put into perspective, this meant that every hour, an exposed 
human would receive a little less than one third of the annual exposure average of 360 
milliroentgens.  The corrosive atmosphere in the chamber required that air be introduced 
to dilute the mixture and flush it from the cavity.  During this process, calculations of the 
volume of the chamber showed it to be in the vicinity of 380,000 cubic feet.  On March 
7-8, a television camera was lowered into the chamber.  The cavity created by Salmon 
measured about 120 feet in diameter, was spherical, and had a flat floor.  The video from 
the camera was telling: still hot as an oven inside the chamber, wisps of smoke appeared 
on the television monitors as paint burned off the camera casing.  Following the 
television survey, the platform crew installed a device called a ?bridge plug? in the 
Postshot 1 hole at the chamber intersection to guide the drilling tools that would reach 
 
 164 
down into the layer of slag and debris at the bottom of the cavity and penetrate deeper to 
sample the salt below the chamber.14  
 The sampling operations were extremely complicated, relying on technology and 
equipment developed in the oilfields.  Onsite innovation, a hallmark of the petroleum 
industry, also became a hallmark of the operations at the Dribble site.  The actual work 
done in the cavity was performed by roughnecks and engineers a half mile away from the 
action, connected only by a thin metal pipe.  Any mistake required a tedious removal of 
tools through the drill casing, slightly less than nine inches in diameter.  The drilling pipe, 
or ?thread,? accessed the bottom of the cavity by a bridge casing connected to the bridge 
plug.  The bridge casing was crucial to add rigidity to the drilling thread as it crossed the 
chamber from top to bottom.  Without it, the drilling thread with its attached coring tool 
would flex and whip around as it was sunk into the material at the bottom of the chamber.  
A simple analogy would be to feed a plumber?s snake into a drain from several feet above 
it, except that with the snake, the shaft lashes back and forth and will not break; in the 
case of drilling thread, the heavy steel tubing would flex beyond its maximum stress 
point and snap off, losing the tool and the important samples located therein.  One sample 
core hole through the bottom of the chamber reached a depth of 2,908 feet, more than 200 
feet beneath the zero point of the Salmon test.  In order to obtain further seismic readings 
below the chamber, technicians added, or ?spotted,? brine in the hole to allow seismic 
                                                 
14 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event.), 35.  NTA accession no. NV0018934; Donald H. Kupfer, ed.  Geology and Technology of Gulf 
Coast Salt, 104; http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/calculate.html (accessed Sep. 15, 2009); 
handwritten memo: Drillback to the Salmon Cavity, Project Dribble (undated), 45-47, NTA accession no. 
NV0105416. 
 
 165 
energy to be transmitted through the material below the cavity when an explosive charge 
was detonated.15 
 Two documentary sources report an incident that followed this sampling and 
spotting operation.  One is a project manager?s report published almost two years after 
the Salmon test; the other is an undated, handwritten draft report that has been partially 
?sanitized.?  The two suggest that an accident occurred at the site on March 22 during a 
coring operation ? in fact, it may have been the deep penetration below the cavity floor.  
On that date, at 4:15 A.M., the crew retrieved a core sample from the dome.  Once the 
sample cleared the hole, Postshot 1 became a man-made geyser of water and steam.  For 
seven minutes, the geyser reached an estimated forty feet into the air before the blooie 
line could be attached; for five hours the efflux diverted into the bleeddown plant.  
Fourteen men were near the hole when it blew, and two of them were drenched by the 
water from the chamber.  All affected personnel proceeded with decontamination at the 
onsite facilities; clothing was handled by a specialized laundry at the Dribble site that 
functioned as part of the decontamination facility.  The director?s report mentions nothing 
of this event ? but it does note that the bridge casing broke away from the bridge plug at 
some date, requiring twenty-two days to retrieve.   
The incident occurred as a result of a steam event in the chamber ? the pressure in 
the chamber as the core sample was taken indicated approximately 1 pound per square 
inch (psi) above atmospheric pressure (approximately 15psi); this was estimated to have 
risen to 12-13psi above atmospheric pressure when the water flashed over to steam.  The 
water could only have come from one of two places: either from the brine injected into 
                                                 
15 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event), 35, NTA accession no.  NV0018934. 
 
 166 
the hole bored beneath the chamber floor; or an aquifer somehow leaked through a 
section of damaged well casing and poured into the salt dome, flashing into steam as it 
encountered the hot salt.  This second possibility seems unlikely because there are no 
reports of this problem being repeated, as it would have been with a leaking casing.  
Either way, Postshot 1 was rendered unusable for some time as the workmen plugged the 
hole with cement for later redrilling, while additional casing was inserted down the hole 
to replace the damaged casing that required drilling out and removal.16              
 This event is made significant by its omission from the manager?s report.  It was 
an uncontrolled release of radioactive material at the site.  Although several people were 
exposed and mildly contaminated, what was reported appeared to be a routine radiation 
release.  The report notes that there was no radioactivity evident 1,000 feet from Postshot 
1, but until the crew diverted the efflux through the well head to the blooie line and tank, 
the water and steam blew into the atmosphere and collected on the ground.  Fortunately 
for those in the vicinity of the well, previous ventilation with compressed air allowed the 
processing of the corrosive vapors through the bleeddown plant.  Samples of water from 
the blooie tank showed minimal radiation.  Two important radiological readings emerged 
from the contaminated water around Postshot 1 and from the blooie system, showing a 
mystery isotope whose identity has been erased from the handwritten memo.  The 
concentration of this isotope, 65.6 microcuries per milliliter of water, existed in the 
ground sample, and 3.85 microcuries per milliliter was present in the blooie tank.  Once 
                                                 
16 Handwritten memo: Drillback to the Salmon Cavity, Project Dribble (undated), 47-48, NTA 
accession no. NV0105416; U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project 
Dribble (Salmon Event.), 35, 75-76, NTA accession no. NV0018934. 
 
 167 
the ground water sampling was complete, it was washed into a collection pond and later 
collected and disposed of as radioactive waste.17 
 What was the mystery substance?  Although its identity does not appear in the 
handwritten report, several clues point the way to a logical conclusion.  The fission 
device that created the cavity was efficient ? that is to say that the fissile material reacted 
in such a manner that it was consumed in the reaction with little residue remaining from 
the detonation.  Forcibly injected into the salt by the blast, the metallic bomb residue and 
fission products existed as a rind around the cavity embedded a few feet deep into the 
salt.  Although such material could exit the chamber in a steam plume, widespread 
dispersal was not felt to be a threat.  Also, fissile materials are severe inhalation hazards, 
and were recognized as such even in 1964.  There was a localized evacuation of the 
drilling rig at Postshot 1, but there was no site-wide evacuation, so it may be concluded 
that the material was considered to be of a lesser hazard.  Therefore, plutonium or 
uranium, their heavier ?daughter? elements, and device casing debris were not likely to 
have been the materials deleted from the report.   
 The Salmon test did produce a radioactive and water soluble substance in quantity 
that did pose a health risk, an isotope of hydrogen called tritium.  Possessing a half life18 
of a little more than eleven years, it emits beta radiation, which can penetrate skin and 
cause burns.  It has several industrial applications, and is widely used in rifle scopes as 
the illuminated pipper and reticle.  The steam eruption would have brought substantial 
quantities of tritium to the surface in the hot water and steam.  Despite tritium?s 
radioactivity, it could be easily washed from clothing and skin as the report noted before 
                                                 
17 Handwritten memo, Drillback to the Salmon Cavity, Project Dribble (undated), 47-53, NTA 
accession no. NV0105416. 
18 ?Half life? refers to the amount of time for an isotope to lose half its radioactivity.   
 
 168 
the contaminated water was directed into disposal pits.  With all the creeks and aquifers 
in the region, the water solubility of tritium posed the greatest contamination hazard.  If 
any material could migrate offsite, tritium was the most likely culprit.  The Salmon test 
caused no detectable contamination to the environment beyond the perimeter fence, but 
the drillback operations produced a sizeable quantity of contaminated drilling fluids, 
?chips? or solid debris, and released additional tritium onto the site.      
 Upon resolution of the steam incident, further investigation of the chamber 
continued.  The Salmon device had excavated a chamber slightly larger than the one CPH 
contracted to excavate.  It did not need ninety-inch shafts for access and excavation.  
Additionally it required no additional site negotiations, nor would it require relocating 
personnel to Texas.  The Salmon chamber looked to be a promising site for the 
decoupling test.  Sand and Tar were indefinitely suspended, although the AEC and 
DARPA still wanted them conducted.  The primary problem facing their execution at the 
Dribble site was size: the Salmon cavity was some 30 feet greater in diameter than the 
chamber planned for the 100-ton Sand test.  Tar could be conducted as easily as Salmon 
had, because it was slated to be a tamped test.  Further analysis showed that device sizes 
were inappropriate to study the magnitude of the decoupling effect because of the 
chamber volume.  Sand and Tar remained in limbo, but plans for reutilizing the cavity 
continued to develop.  
 With the successful test of the Salmon device, Mississippi still hoped to become a 
center for nuclear research.  The seismic detection program was important, but it also 
achieved one of the goals of Plowshare ? a potentially useful salt cavity had been 
excavated in less than a second through the use of an atomic explosive.  But it was not 
 
 169 
the only nuclear research program that interested the state in 1965.  Upon his 
inauguration, President Lyndon Johnson had issued a ?Policy for National Action in the 
Field of High Energy Physics,? authorizing construction of a 200-billion-electron-volt 
(Bev) proton accelerator facility.  Having a nuclear test site in the state and enjoying a 
short-term financial boost was one thing, but gaining an advanced scientific facility 
located in the Piney Woods, possibly close to Hattiesburg, was quite another.  It would 
result in a long-term financial benefit to the region and be the ultimate reward for 
MITRC?s efforts to champion Mississippi?s technical and scientific potential.  Dr. 
Andrew Suttle was no longer the director of MITRC.  In 1962, he joined Texas A&M 
University as vice president for research before leaving to work with Dr. Harold Brown 
in Washington.  Dr. Robert F. Dye assumed MITRC directorship, having been with the 
organization since its formation.  Winning such an accelerator facility would vindicate 
Suttle and Dye?s work to bring high technology to the region.  Suttle?s close ties to the 
AEC and its chairman Glenn Seaborg, developed during his work in Washington, D.C. 
between 1962 and 1964, and appeared to be a further advantage.  By mid-1965, forty-five 
of the forty-eight contiguous states vied for the contract; near the end of the year, the list 
had shrunk to forty-three states, with Mississippi suggesting locations near Jackson, Scott 
County, and Perry/Forest County.  The latter location was close to Hattiesburg.19 
 The requirements listed by the AEC and the National Academy of Sciences 
(NAS) were broad in nature.  At least 3,000 acres were necessary, and preferably already 
                                                 
19 Undated lists, ?State-by-State Applicants for AEC?s Accelerator Laboratory,? and ?United  
States Atomic Energy Commission Proposals Identified by AEC for Further Consideration by NAS 
Committee.? Also, ?Enclosure I,? document unknown, April 24, 1965. folder 1, box 29:  Mayor Paul 
Grady: Atomic Energy Commission (1962-1972; Undated) M208 MCAUSM; Texas A&M University 
News, VI 6-4919, undated,  Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University; Jon Sven 
Knudson, ?Beam On: The Development of the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute? (master?s thesis, College 
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), 27-33.  
 
 170 
owned by the federal government, or easily procured.  The soil had to be firm enough to 
provide a solid foundation for the one-mile-diameter apparatus, and preferably would be 
fairly level to avoid serious earth moving operations.20  Furthermore, the suitable location 
needed to be free of faults and seismic activity.  Several hundred megawatts of electricity 
needed to be available, and though not a deal-breaker, a ready supply of fresh water for 
the facility was preferred.  The site needed to be near a major airport, as well as having 
access to highways and railroads for material and personnel transportation.  In addition, 
the AEC desired a commercial industrial center to be located nearby for easier access to 
specialized technical personnel, including research facilities that would allow for 
?opportunities for desirable interaction of scientific and engineering personnel,? suitable 
housing for several thousand people who would form the permanent staff at the facility, 
and finally ?proximity to a cultural center that includes a large university will provide 
intellectual and cultural opportunities attractive for staff and families.?  Always desiring 
to save money, the AEC was conscious of ?regional wage and cost variations as well as 
labor surplus areas? in its decision-making process.  This might insinuate that the South, 
with its traditionally anti-union sentiment and large number of under-employed skilled 
laborers, appealed to the selection committee.21   
 By these specifications, the Hattiesburg area contended strongly, and the city 
fathers knew it.  Though small, the University of Southern Mississippi was in 
Hattiesburg, Camp Shelby just to the southeast, fresh water abounded, and thanks to the 
Salmon test, the entire area was more seismologically and geologically surveyed than 
                                                 
20 Opelika, Alabama was on the list of prospective locations, as was New Orleans, despite its 
swampy nature. 
21 AEC bulletin H-94, AEC-NAS Enter Agreement On Evaluating Sites for a Proposed New  
National Accelerator Laboratory (Apr. 28, 1965), folder 1, box 29: Mayor Paul Grady: Atomic Energy 
Commission (1962-1972; Undated), M208 MCAUSM. 
 
 171 
practically any other location on the planet.  Although AFTAC had demurred on using 
Hattiesburg?s airport, it received moderate commercial traffic, and if necessary could be 
enlarged to a more suitable size.  Road and rail traffic, the reason for Hattiesburg?s 
nickname ?Hub City,? were more than sufficient.  Cultural activities, if unavailable in 
Hattiesburg, could be found in New Orleans, Mobile, or the state capital in Jackson, all 
within 120 miles.  The Gulf Coast?s beaches were a ready diversion located only an hour 
or so away.  At the Tatum Dome, air compressors cooled the atmosphere in the Salmon 
chamber while in Hattiesburg and Jackson, excitement heated up. 
 Dreams of advanced research facilities and further activities at the Tatum Dome 
were dampened when the hurricane season presented the Gulf Coast with another deadly 
storm.  From September 1, 1965, to its landfall on the night of September 9-10, Hurricane 
Betsy carved a path of destruction that confounded meteorologists because of its refusal 
to follow a consistent track.  In the Atlantic, Betsy made two complete loops before 
hitting the tip of Florida and entering the Gulf.  From there, it headed steadily toward 
Louisiana, striking the mouth of the Mississippi River and charging inland, passing to the 
southwest of New Orleans.  In the worst hurricane to hit New Orleans up to that time, the 
waters of Lake Ponchartrain inundated neighborhoods throughout the city.  Forty years 
later, the same neighborhoods were similarly drowned, though Betsy?s death toll barely 
exceeded eighty persons.22  The effects of the storm occasioned a sharp criticism from 
Edward Teller, who was addressing a meeting of the Louisiana-Arkansas Division of the 
Mid-Continent Oil Association.  In words that would resound two generations later, he 
asked, ?Why weren?t the people of the inundated areas evacuated??. Your city had hours 
                                                 
22 ?New Orleans Hurricane History? accessed via 
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2010/teams/neworleans1/hurricane%20history.htm (accessed Feb. 14, 
2010). 
 
 172 
of warning.  Why wasn?t it anticipated that the levee of the Industrial Canal might break?  
In any storm the size of Betsy, tidal wave action can be anticipated.?  Understandably, 
New Orleans mayor Vic Schiro was less than cordial in receiving this criticism.  
Furthermore, the scope of the devastation eliminated the city from consideration for the 
particle accelerator.23 
 Still, Mississippi remained guardedly optimistic that it had a chance of landing the 
particle accelerator.  Things proceeded well at the Dribble site, too.  One of the problems 
that the testing program encountered was how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of 
gallons of liquid waste generated by the reentry program, and by the incident caused by 
the steam and water release.  Considering collection and transportation of these wastes 
too expensive and hazardous, project management deemed an onsite disposal method 
necessary.  An uncontrolled release of radioactive substances into the aquifers around the 
site raised serious concern at the Dribble site because the surrounding residents and their 
livestock depended on well water.  But there were aquifers that locals did not use because 
they contained nothing but brine.  Project engineers realized that the fifth aquifer layer 
below the surface, which lay at an average depth of 2,500 feet, was isolated between 
heavy clay layers and consisted of brine.  Liquid injection from the drillback operations 
into the brine aquifer through the HT-2 well isolated the waste.  Monitoring stations 
ensured that the waste remained where it belonged until its radioactivity decayed.24 
 In the meantime, an extensive program of water, air, and milk sampling took 
place to track any entry of radioactive materials into the environment.  The USPHS office 
in Montgomery, Alabama, constantly monitored calcium (Ca), potassium (K), strontium 
                                                 
23 Hattiesburg American, Sept. 15, 1965. 
24 W. W. Allaire to AEC NVOO, March 11, 1965, NTA accession no. NV0096077. 
 
 173 
(Sr) isotopes Sr-89 and Sr-90, an isotope of iodine (I-131), an isotope of cesium (Cs-
137), and an isotope of barium (Ba-140) in milk samples from 1963 onward.  These 
isotopes presented special health hazards, and because they were direct fission products 
they would indicate a serious problem at the site linked directly to the Salmon explosion.  
The most serious threats, Strontium, cesium, and iodine-131 were the basis of the 
international demand to stop atmospheric testing.  These substances were especially 
dangerous if consumed by children, as the body processed strontium like calcium, storing 
it in the bones where the radiation killed and weakened bone cells.  In large enough doses 
it could cause tumors and cancer.  Cesium concentrates in muscle tissue, and iodine-131 
mimicked beneficial iodine and concentrated in the thyroid gland.  Cesium and iodine are 
water-soluble; surface water and milk were constantly checked for the presence of these 
substances.  From the beginning, all sites reported the presence of these materials in 
minute quantities, the legacy of nearly twenty years of atmospheric nuclear testing.25   
 The public safety program considered water well monitoring crucial.  Utilizing 
purpose-drilled wells and private wells, monitoring personnel periodically took samples 
and transported them to Montgomery for testing.  The water wells were a source of 
concern to local residents because along with the sporadic damage to their homes, the 
well water was a visible sign that something had happened at the salt dome.  One hundred 
fourteen sites within thirty miles of the Dribble site reported water quality issues ? in 
most cases the water had been agitated deep in the aquifer by the shock caused by the test 
and had picked up sediment.  The shock also affected the filter screening of some pumps, 
                                                 
25 Environmental Protection Agency, Project Dribble Data, April 21, 1971, NTA accession no. 
NV0037113.  This file is a cumulative collection of air, water, and dairy sampling at the site; for further 
information on radionucleid health threats, see Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety 
About the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), and Richard L. Miller, Under the Cloud: The 
Decades of Nuclear Testing (New York: The Free Press, 1986). 
 
 174 
leading to clogging with sediment or rust.  None of these complaints were considered 
serious, except by those affected.  Still, the water looked different, and the Hazleton 
Nuclear Science Corporation (HNSC) conducted constant monitoring to make certain that 
cavity materials had not contaminated the water supply, and to reassure local residents.26  
On the anniversary of the Salmon test, the Hattiesburg American reported 
noticeable changes on and around the test site.  Government vehicles were no longer 
omnipresent on the roads around the site, and human activity was minimal.  Compressors 
continued to cycle air through the chamber, but from all indications, things were on hold.  
Unknown to the reporter, estimates were already submitted for the purpose of reopening 
the Station 1A hole, and putting the Dribble site back on a nuclear test footing.  The 
chamber was too big for the paired Sand and Tar decoupling/baseline tests; instead a 
reverse extrapolation suggested an appropriately increased device yield for the cavity 
volume.  The first step to a return to testing was to reopen Station 1A, as it was larger 
than the postshot holes and led directly down into the Salmon chamber.  A second device 
would be lowered into the chamber and suspended in the exact center of the void.  The 
cost of reopening Station 1A was estimated at $300,000 and with a sixty-one day 
timetable.  Furthermore, there was no guarantee that the casing had held against the 
aquifers when Salmon detonated: engineers estimated only a 25 percent chance that the 
shaft was dry to a depth of 2,200 feet.  If they reached that depth and the shaft was dry, 
they raised their estimate to a 75 percent chance that they could then extend their 
reopening operations into the chamber.  The Tatum Dome had stymied them before, and 
                                                 
26 U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, NVO 24 Project Manager?s Report, Project Dribble (Salmon 
Event.), 95-96, NTA accession no.  NV0018934.  
 
 175 
no one was betting that it would not do so again.  Finally, on January 3, 1966, the AEC 
issued a work order to reopen Station 1A.27 
A week after the anniversary of Salmon, the third and largest VU test was 
conducted.  Called ?Long Shot,? the 80kt shot exploded in an excavated shaft 2,300 feet 
below the remote island of Amchitka in the Aleutian chain.  The reason for conducting 
the test in that location was because of regional seismic activity, and because of the 
isolation of the site.  Long Shot was the first nuclear test at Amchitka, which would see 
two thermonuclear tests: 1mt ?Milrow? in 1969; and the largest underground test ever 
conducted by the United States, 5mt ?Cannikin? in 1971.28      
Meanwhile, the news regarding the particle accelerator became less than 
optimistic.  Having thus far survived a process of elimination, the Piney Woods received 
official visitors on December 1 as a party of four AEC advisors arrived, and were feted 
throughout the day.  Their morning arrival in Hattiesburg was quickly followed by a 
press conference, a country club luncheon with most of the Chamber of Commerce in 
attendance, a tour of two possible sites for the facility, followed by a dinner reception at 
the Hattiesburg Holiday Inn.  The local paper whipped up enthusiasm for the visit, and 
editorials espoused the importance of bringing further research and development assets 
into the area.  Beginning in September, the American regularly featured items arguing 
that Hattiesburg should ride the crest of high-tech industrial development.  Mayor Paul 
Grady determined to bring the facility to the region: ?Anything this big could smash 
                                                 
27 Hattiesburg American, Oct. 22, 1965; Robert E. Miller to V. F. Denton, Oct. 12, 1965, NTA 
accession no. NV0096074; James E. Reeves, ?Work Authorization Number 1 ? Station 1A Re-Entry, 
Project Dribble; PPB:NLP-2062? (Jan. 3, 1966), NTA accession no. NV0096068. 
28 Cochran, et. al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 166, 168-9; Dean W. Kolhoff, Amchitka and the 
Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 56-61, 105-06.  
Cannikin is notable for the environmental outrage it generated, and for the attempts by Sierra Club 
members to stop it by sailing the ship Greenpeace to the area; this action, motivated by the Milrow test and 
funded by an anti-testing benefit rock concert spawned the Greenpeace organization. 
 
 176 
many of our problems, it would be a magnificent development for the entire trade area.  
We?re keeping our fingers crossed.?  Others advised caution.  The chairman of 
Mississippi Power Company?s industrial development department, Les Wood, was not 
?overly optimistic.?29 
Following the visit, came the exchange of obligatory thank you notes.  The AEC 
team wrote to Mayor Grady on December 27, after finishing their tour of possible sites; 
Grady?s response followed more than a month later, still arguing Hattiesburg?s case.  He 
contended that an easily arranged plan for temporarily housing workers at Camp Shelby 
offset the shortage of housing noted by the AEC visitors.  Road improvements had 
progressed substantially since construction workers had been stationed there during 
World War II when Hattiesburg had little public housing.  Grady pointed out that before 
the war ?there was only a two-lane highway that carried the traffic from Hattiesburg to 
Camp Shelby.  Now there is a beautiful four-lane highway, separated by a wooded 
median strip which provides for faster, safer, and more effective movement of traffic 
from Hattiesburg to either of the two sites we visited with your team.? It was no use.  The 
AEC wanted its particle accelerator, but it was part of a financially burdened government 
faced with the rapidly growing expense of the Vietnam war.  Then there was the political 
problem: Mississippi continued to defy the national Democratic Party, and gave Barry 
Goldwater and overwhelming 87.1 percent of the vote over his opponent, Lyndon 
Johnson, during the 1964 Presidential election.  As Bruce Schulman pointed out, acting 
against the will of the federal power structure bore the potential consequence of losing 
federal programs.  Citing Hubert Humphrey, he noted the power that bureaucrats held 
                                                 
29 Hattiesburg American, Sept. 14-15, 1965; Hattiesburg Chamber of Commerce to  
Mayor Paul Grady,  Nov. 24, 1965,  box 29, folder 1 ? Mayor Paul Grady: Atomic Energy Commission 
(1962-1972; Undated). M208 MCAUSM.  
 
 177 
when locating federally funded research programs at universities, ?making a vast 
intellectual wasteland out of America by having R&D contracts concentrated as they are 
in limited geographical areas.? 30      
Ultimately, a 200-Bev particle accelerator was constructed at Texas A&M 
University (TAMU) in College Station.  AEC chairman Seaborg told Suttle that he 
wanted TAMU to become a center for chemistry and physics research despite 
competition from other institutions, and this certainly influenced the selection process.  
The new particle accelerator became known as the Texas A&M Variable Energy 
Cyclotron, or TAMVEC.  In the end, Suttle continued as assistant director of research at 
TAMU until 1971, when deposed from his post as director of the cyclotron institute.  
TAMVEC began operations in 1967, narrowly missing the contraction of the AEC?s 
largesse in funding particle accelerator research that occurred in the 1970s.31 
The particle accelerator project sought by sites across the nation almost certainly 
became the TAMVEC; Seaborg?s wishes were evident before the official site selection 
began.  TAMU entered into a contract with the AEC on April 24, 1964 to develop a 
particle physics facility.  The inescapable conclusion is that the selection process was a 
mere formality and that despite their hopes, Hattiesburg never stood a chance.32 
Still, another nuclear test was likely at the Dribble site ? a consolation prize to be 
certain, but it promised more activity for the region.  The program had changed again.  A 
decoupling test would be conducted at the Tatum Dome, but it would be different from 
                                                 
30 Dr. Spofford G. English to Mayor Paul Grady, Dec. 27, 1965; Mayor Paul Grady to Dr.  
Spofford G.English, Jan. 31, 1966, folder 1, box 29: Mayor Paul Grady: Atomic Energy Commission 
(1962-1972; undated).  M208 MCAUSM; Hattiesburg American, Dec. 1, Dec. 22, 1965;  Schulman, ?From 
Cotton Belt to Sunbelt,? 272, 332, 353. 
31Knudson, ?Beam On,? 33, 38, 67-71. 
32 Ibid., 38. 
 
 178 
the proposed and now cancelled Sand test.  First, the device yield would be increased, 
from 100 tons to more than 300 tons yield to compensate for the larger diameter of the 
cavity.  Second, there was the issue of the chamber, which was blast-formed instead of 
having been excavated.  Finally, the shot was redesignated ?Sterling.?  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 179 
Chapter Eight 
A Silver Lining and a Miracle Play 
 
 Project Dribble underwent several configuration changes since it had been first 
announced in 1961.  As originally conceived, it incorporated two phases of operation at 
the Tatum Dome.  The series lost its higher yield tests in 1962.  This was a fortunate 
change, for if the 5kt Salmon shot shook houses in the region, the planned 25kt 
detonation would likely have leveled them and caused damage far beyond Purvis and 
Hattiesburg.  Instead, the 5kt shot and the two 100-ton decoupling tests, Sand and Tar, 
remained on the active shot list until water problems forced DARPA and the AEC to 
reconsider whether to execute the two smaller tests elsewhere.  They remained in limbo, 
and eventually died there.  Sterling simply replaced them.  As far as the question of 
decoupling was concerned, it was the more important test; Sterling would be detonated in 
the chamber Salmon had created. Though Sterling was in effect a consolation prize to the 
Dribble program managers because it was not the program that was originally desired, it 
still addressed the important aspect of decoupling in underground test concealment. 
 The high-explosive Cowboy tests had clearly shown that the decoupling effect 
could be significant when an explosive detonated in an excavated chamber.  One of VU?s 
primary tasks was addressing the problem of detecting large decoupled nuclear tests to 
when their seismic signals dropped below the generally detectable threshold of 5kt.   
Below that yield it became unlikely that an underground shot would reliably be detected 
because of the masking effect of natural seismic noise.  In a large enough salt formation, 
decoupling chambers could be excavated that would allow such large weapons to be 
secretly tested while generating seismic signals that remained below levels that would 
 
 180 
betray their origin.  In other words, salt could allow an unfriendly country to hide its 
weapons tests.  Should a treaty be signed between nuclear nations creating a threshold 
yield for underground tests, one side could violate it with impunity.  This was the 
problem faced by scientists and diplomats alike. 
 Originally, the ideal decoupling chamber was to be mined in the Tatum Dome as 
part of Project Dribble ? in fact, there would be two chambers: one for each phase of the 
operation.  But water control problems quashed any possibility that the large diameter 
shafts needed by the excavation crews could be successfully sunk into the salt.  So the 
Salmon emplacement by a narrower shaft was far easier to seal against water intrusion, 
and the resulting void appeared to meet the needs of a slightly larger decoupling test.   
In fact, Sterling was far more practical and ideal than anyone initially realized.  
Plowshare, the ?peaceful atom? program, used nuclear charges for excavation and 
earthmoving.  As Salmon demonstrated when the chamber was reentered in March 1965, 
a nuclear device was useful for creating a sizeable, dimensionally uniform void in solid 
salt.  On top of that, there was no salt to dispose of, which could reveal excavation 
efforts.  This made secret testing feasible for several reasons.  There was no threshold 
limit for underground tests, thus any sized device could be employed to create a test 
chamber that could be used to hide later tests.  By 1966, the Soviet Union conducted 
several underground tests that created underground cavities.  In addition, a country that 
wanted to be truly devious could cloak their tests behind diplomatically acceptable 
means.  A country could announce an internationally acceptable Plowshare-type test, 
detonate the device, and end up with a ready-made decoupling chamber with the size of 
the void being determined simply by the device yield.  The seismic signal thus explained 
 
 181 
as an acceptable detonation, no repercussions from the creation of the test chamber 
followed.   
 The real problem lay in the properties of salt once it had been exposed to the 
effects of an atomic blast.  In a mined chamber, the cavity walls are smooth.  The only 
cracks or fissures present are the ones that have occurred naturally as the salt pushed 
upwards from deep within the earth.  If brine-mining is used, the solution can actually fill 
any small cracks; the chamber would have a perfectly uniform surface almost like glass 
or marble.   In salt mines, striations and ripples are clearly visible in the ceiling and walls 
of the excavations, allowing geologists to track where smaller upwellings in the overall 
diapir have occurred over time.1   
The Salmon chamber was a different story.  The device created a hellish 
environment, with heavily fractured cavity walls.   The heat released by the test remained 
trapped in the void for months before reentry and ventilation cooled it down.  Sample 
cores drilled into and nearby the void revealed that three distinctive salt conditions were 
present after the test, layered like a hollow onion.  The cavity radius was some 17 meters, 
or about 55 feet.  The innermost layer started at the wall of the chamber and extended out 
to about 20 meters, or a little more than 65 feet.  The second shell or layer extended from 
20 meters to 60 meters, nearly 200 feet from the cavity center.  The third distinct layer 
extended from 60 meters to 120 meters, or nearly 400 feet.  The innermost layer was 
highly distressed and deformed.  The blast shattered and melted the salt immediately 
surrounding the Salmon device and heaved it outward.  Radioactive gases injected into 
natural and newly-created fissures.  The intense heat caused the shattered mass to remain 
                                                 
1 Donald H. Kupfer, ?Relationship of Internal to External Structure of Salt Domes,? in Braunstein 
and O?Brien, eds., Diapirism and Diapirs, 81. 
 
 182 
viscous, and as it slowly cooled material fell to the bottom of the chamber, forming the 
flat floor.  Large and small fractures in the salt existed throughout this layer.2   
The second layer consisted of micro-fractured salt, created by the mechanical 
action of the chamber?s creation.  When Salmon detonated, a void formed where solid 
salt once existed, and during its creation there was an immediate period of expansion 
followed quickly by a rebound of the cavity walls.  This mechanical action shattered the 
crystal structure of this second layer.  The third or outermost layer was partially micro-
fractured, and transitioned into the natural salt stock that made up the dome.3 
 The fracturing, micro-fracturing, and gas injection were serious.  They did not 
affect the structural integrity of the chamber, which though heavily deformed, was sound, 
but they did affect the transmission of seismic energy.  Estimates varied as to how much 
the shot-formed cavity would decouple blast energy from a nuclear test, the consensus 
emerging that it would diminish the decoupling effect.  This seems illogical, for the 
chamber was surrounded by a loosened layer of salt that would allow the chamber to flex 
when a subsequent device exploded, and would dampen the shock before it traveled 
farther into the salt dome and into the surrounding earth.  Most desirable was a uniform 
salt body with no micro-fractures that would flex uniformly, distributing the blast wave 
evenly along the walls of the chamber in all directions.  The Salmon chamber was 
spherical except for the floor, formed from an aggregate of melted material and device 
debris.  The floor was flat and would not allow blast shock to expand uniformly.  Also, 
the heavily distressed chamber walls concealed mechanically created weaknesses that 
                                                 
2 ?Unclassified Excerpt From Technical Concept, Project Sterling? (July 7, 1966), 6, NTA 
accession no. NV0096497. 
3 Ibid. 
 
 183 
could allow blast energy to find an easier transmission to the more solid salt.  No one 
knew.  Estimates of the decoupling effect ranged from a factor of 160 to a factor of 20.4 
         Sterling was to be the second nuclear shot at the Dribble site.  A third shot was also 
being considered: a decoupling shot detonated in a mined cavity to compare with the 
Salmon/Sterling data.  Despite the problems with water control in the shafts leading to 
the mined chamber site, engineers felt that innovations would eventually allow the mined 
chamber to be created with a thirty-six-inch-diameter shaft to a depth of 2,700 feet.  
Called ?Payette,? the 5-10kt shot would explore the possibility of fully decoupling a 5kt 
blast and reusing a mined test chamber.  Unlike the Sand shot, Payette?s chamber-mining 
operation was not set on a rigid timetable, and the program was expected to proceed at a 
much slower pace.  Long before Payette, Sterling would test the reusability of the Salmon 
cavity, with an estimated 350-ton yield.5 
 Sterling?s pedigree is not as easy to estimate as Salmon?s.  What seems certain is 
that Salmon was a militarily obsolete device; this certainly does not apply readily to 
Sterling.  Subkiloton devices have existed in the United States? nuclear arsenal only for 
specialized functions.  Before advanced designs allowed small-diameter thermonuclear 
weapons with megaton yields, device size corresponded with device yield.  Thus if one 
wanted a big explosion, one had to deliver a big bomb.  For specialized uses, such as the 
Davy Crockett recoilless rifle or the nuclear-armed version of the Falcon air-to-air 
missile, the small weapon size corresponded with a small device yield.  The same could 
be said for the new Small Atomic Demolitions Munition, or SADM.  All three of these 
                                                 
4  Ibid., 10. 
5 Dean Warner, ?Project Payette? (Aug. 19, 1966),  pp. 4-6, U. S. Department of Energy, 
Department Office of Scientific and Technical Information (hereafter cited as OSTI), reference number 
434320.  Accessible via www.osti.gov.  Last accessed April 22, 2010. 
 
 184 
devices shared a common warhead based on the W-54 design that allowed for a yield 
between 0.02 and 1kt, depending on the weapon configuration.  Also common between 
these weapons is that they were all actively in the stockpile in 1966.  In fact, the W-54 
was a relatively new design.  Sterling most probably used the fissile core of an active 
weapon and thus was far closer to a weapon test than Salmon, which made sense for a 
decoupling experiment.  The other alternative is that Sterling was the fission primary 
from a retired thermonuclear weapon.  This is almost impossible to discern, because all 
pertinent information regarding the Sterling device has been sanitized from the project 
documentation.6 
 Beginning on October 8, 1966, United States Public Health Service personnel 
began contacting residents around the test site.  Concentrating primarily in a five-mile 
radius around the test site, they collected pertinent information regarding the residents of 
the area so as to create a viable evacuation program.  Despite Sterling?s comparatively 
puny yield compared to Salmon, no one could predict the amount of decoupling that 
would occur ? or whether the chamber?s integrity would fail and allow a radioactive leak 
into the surrounding countryside.  Like Salmon, evacuation procedures would be 
followed, as would some other interesting measures.  A November 17 meeting at 
Baxterville school informed residents of the upcoming test, and asked whether those 
within the two-mile radius of the test site would again leave their homes.  Senator John 
Stennis kept abreast of the developments as well, and was advised that the AEC had 
                                                 
6 Hansen, U. S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History, 107; James Norris Gibson,  The History of 
the U. S. Nuclear Arsenal (Greenwich: Brompton Books, 1989), 79, 179, 187.  
 
 185 
determined a shot date of November 29, 1966, at 6:00 AM.7 
 The early timing of the Sterling shot presented different challenges than the 
Salmon test.  For the latter, a 10:00 AM shot time allowed area residents to leave in the 
morning and wait for the all-clear signal.  The early shot time for Sterling led USPHS 
workers to advise those residents within the two-mile radius of the test leave the night 
before.  Of the thirty-one families in the area, comprising 127 persons, all agreed to 
follow the recommendation save for one family who ran a poultry farm.  They elected to 
leave at 3:00 AM on shot day in order to tend to their chickens.  Instead of paying each 
adult and child a daily compensatory amount for evacuating the area, the AEC based the 
payments on four-hour blocks of time: every adult would receive $6.00 for every four 
hours they were dislocated, and every child would receive $2.00.8 
 The reason for pushing the schedule up was seismic noise.  Sterling was a small 
device, and the chamber was expected to decouple its seismic signal and make it hard to 
detect.  Six o?clock AM was about dawn, when the area stirred and began the day.  
Commuters added significantly to seismic background noise because of the unique nature 
of the regional geology. Father Eisele at Spring Hill College noted the inability of his 
relatively sophisticated seismographs to collect accurate seismic data due to the traffic in 
Mobile during daylight hours: ?a problem in the operation of sensitive instruments in this 
Gulf Coast region is the absence of solid rock upon which to mount the seismographs?. 
It is so easy to vibrate this kind of sediment that the local traffic patterns of Mobile are 
clearly recorded on our records.  In fact, from about 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. our records are 
                                                 
7 U. S. Public Health Service, ?Vela Uniform Program, Sterling Event: Off-Site Surveillance,? 
VUF-1036 (May 24, 1968), 6; John J. Burke to Stennis, Nov. 14, 1966, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-8 
1963-67, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.    
8 U. S. Public Health Service, ?Vela Uniform Program, Sterling Event: Off-Site Surveillance,? 
VUF-1036, (May 24, 1968), 9-10, 14; Mobile (AL) Press-Register, Dec. 4, 1966. 
 
 186 
almost useless because all we are recording are ?wiggles? caused by commuting 
Mobilians.?  In order to diminish the possibility that road and rail traffic would affect the 
ability of distant recording stations to detect Sterling, the early test time helped avoid 
noise generated by the morning commute.  Road and rail traffic would be temporarily 
halted in the area around the test site on the morning of shot day.  Newspaper reporters, 
granted full access to the progress of the Sterling operation, gave it the sobriquet ?the 
sneak test.?9 
 The only thing to sneak past anyone on November 29 was the Sterling test itself.  
In what must have been a depressing reminder of Salmon?s month of weather delays, 
program managers rescheduled the shot for December 5.  Whether the device was 
retrieved following the aborted test and re-emplaced or was allowed to remain in the 
decoupling chamber is unknown.  What is certain is that something went wrong between 
November 28 and December 2.  A coolant system designed to regulate the device 
temperature while it was suspended in the still-warm chamber began to fail.  Nuclear 
devices seem infinitely powerful, as they are capable of wiping out targets in less than a 
second.  Yet, they are also delicate, relying on precise mechanical geometry that ensures 
the proper progression of the shock wave from the high explosives that compresses the 
fissile pit.  The pit itself must be kept within a certain temperature range so that fission 
propagates properly through the fissile mass: the warmer the pit, the greater the distance 
between atoms, making them harder to hit with neutrons.  The physical distance seems 
small but on the atomic scale, this spread can mean the difference between a full fission 
reaction and a partial reaction, or ?fizzle.?  Temperature readings coming from the 
                                                 
9 ??Hill? Professor Does Something About Quakes,? undated, publisher unknown, reference 
number 2006.002.4, Father Louis Eisele subject folder, Spring Hill College Archives; Mobile Press-
Register, Dec. 4, 1966. 
 
 187 
Sterling device indicated that the cooling system was not functioning, and that the 
temperature of the device was not being maintained.  Instead of delaying the test to 
retrieve the device and repair the cooling system, a decision made on December 2 began 
evacuation procedures for the area around the Dribble site in preparation for firing the 
following morning.10 
 Local law enforcement and the state patrol policed the area that night while 
USPHS caseworkers tallied the residents as they departed.  At 3:00 AM, the AEC took 
over control of the roadblocks.  Alerted by radio, a Southern Railways freight train on the 
Picayune to Purvis mainline stopped.  The last family left the area just before 3:00 AM; 
the roads around the test site were empty, save for other law enforcement and 
government vehicles transporting detection teams and rad safety personnel.  At 6:15 AM 
on the morning of December 3, 1966, Sterling?s firing circuit closed.  The control 
personnel stationed a mile from the epicenter of the test reported a rumble; cattle grazing 
near the area also likely felt a mild tremor.  Reporters stationed at the observation 
location debated whether they had felt anything at all.  The only people who were certain 
that anything had happened were monitoring seismographic instruments, and they clearly 
saw that the blast had occurred.  Sterling was later found to have exceeded its planned 
yield by the equivalent of 30 tons of TNT, for a total yield of 380 tons, or 0.38kt.11 
 Sterling?s seismic signal was decoupled by the Salmon chamber.  Despite the 
uncertainty over the effect that the distorted and distressed salt surrounding the chamber 
                                                 
10 James E. Reeves to Governor Paul Johnson, Jr., Jan. 10, 1967, box 48: Correspondence, 
Alphabetical A-Be, folder 6, Correspondence: Alphabetical: At-Ay, M191: Johnson Family Papers.  
MCAUSM. 
11U. S. Public Health Service, ?Vela Uniform Program, Sterling Event: Off-Site Surveillance,? 
VUF-1036 (May 24, 1968), 13-14.  Accessed via the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), 
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA382680&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf (accessed 
Sept. 30, 2009); Mobile Press-Register, Dec. 4, 1966.  
 
 188 
would have on the shock wave, its effect on Sterling was substantial.   The postshot 
assessment found that the decoupling effect was roughly a factor of 70, which was 
exactly in the middle of the range predicted before the test.  In other words, in a shot-
created cavity of appropriate size that had been excavated by a nuclear blast, a 70kt blast 
could register as yielding as little as 1kt.  Though far lower than the predicted effect of a 
mined chamber due to the inelastic nature of the micro-fractured salt layers, this was a 
significant reduction in signal strength.  The other important finding with Sterling was the 
seismic frequency range produced by the test in relation to Salmon.  Sterling, and a high 
explosive shot fired in a shaft in the salt at the same depth, produced longer-lasting high-
frequency seismic waves, whereas Salmon?s seismic energy concentrated in lower 
frequencies; it was the difference between a ?boom? and a ?bang,? but it likely pointed 
the way to the ability of a seismic detection network to determine whether a shot was 
coupled or decoupled.  Furthermore, the floor of the chamber improved the elasticity of 
the salt in that portion of the chamber and possibly added to the decoupling effect.12  
 Shot-generated decoupling chambers clearly offered an effective means to 
attenuate seismic signal strength.  Mathematically, the Salmon chamber was 
appropriately sized for a shot in the 200-ton range, but as the margin of safety in Albert 
Latter?s decoupling figures was a factor of two, a 325 and later 350-ton yield device was 
approved.  As Sterling fell precisely in the middle of the expected range for the 
decoupling effect, it suggested that mathematical scaling laws and other means of 
extrapolation were adequate to explore the size of a shot-created decoupling chamber 
                                                 
12 D. Springer, et al., ?The Sterling Experiment: Decoupling of Seismic Waves by a Shot-
Generated Cavity,? Journal of Geophysical Research 73 (Sept. 15, 1968): 5995-96, 6000-02, 6009-10. 
 
 189 
needed to hide a 5kt blast from detection.  As technicians behind the Iron Curtain would 
later discover, duplicating the effect that Sterling produced was difficult.13 
 Sterling benefited from the extensive seismic monitoring program that was 
emplaced for Salmon.  Seismometers placed in deep holes around the site augmented 
surface stations radiating outward from the test site to a distance of roughly twenty-five 
miles.  The reuse of equipment was cost-efficient and logical.  Without the extra expense 
of drilling and emplacing new devices, the program could remain closer to the overall 
budget, and reusing the same devices also allowed those monitoring the data the ability to 
correlate the readings from the test site that had passed through a common filter.  This 
simple expedient further aided the employment of scaling laws to model different-sized 
decoupling effects.   
 There were no plans to reenter the Salmon cavity for at least eight months after 
Sterling.  In the meantime, the recording equipment was recovered, USPHS personnel 
monitored the wells and the milk produced in the area around the test site, and local 
residents returned to business as usual.  But there was a difference: the excitement 
surrounding the Dribble site was increasingly replaced by feelings of resentment.  The 
Sterling test required little extra work from contractors, so the money that the Salmon test 
produced was less.  In addition, further talk of Project Payette made people nervous.  
Salmon, at 5kt had caused damage over a greater area than had been anticipated, although 
most of it was minor.  Payette was planned to be 5-10kt, despite it being planned for an 
excavated decoupling cavity.  To the people living around the Tatum Dome, it seemed 
that all the AEC wanted to do was to set off devices in the salt dome while they still had 
                                                 
13 ?Unclassified Excerpt From Technical Concept, Project Sterling,? (Jul. 7, 1966), 6, NTA 
accession no. NV0096497. 
 
 190 
it.  Science or no science, and future treaties be damned, they were getting tired of the 
inconvenience and wary of the likely damage from future tests.   
 By May 1967, Payette had Frederick Mellen and Frank Tatum fully riled.  Letters 
from both criticized the AEC?s further exploration of the salt dome for the test.  Tatum 
argued that the drilling could be performed by private companies from Louisiana or 
Mississippi for far less than the $275,000 dollars that the Jackson Clarion-Ledger 
reported at the beginning of the month was to be paid to Fenix and Scisson from 
Oklahoma.  Citing the vast experience such local firms had gained by creating 
underground storage chambers for hydrocarbons and petroleum, Tatum was thoroughly 
convinced that the activities at the salt dome were nothing more than outlandish federal 
waste: 
 
On every hand, where there is a government project, you see an enormous waste 
of material, time and effort.  As an example, the AEC has paid $150,000 to $300,000 to 
get a well drilled 2500? into the salt mass at the Tatum Salt Dome and I am sure private 
industry could have done it for $25,000 to $40,000.  As a matter of fact I drilled the first 
well into the Tatum Salt Dome with a small drilling rig from the Jackson Gas field and 
drilled 600? into the salt at a cost of about $15,000.14 
  
Mellen was concerned with more than government waste.  Writing to Senator 
George Murphy concerning the AEC?s activities at the Dribble site, he argued: 
 
Never in the history of the United States of America has an agency been given 
such broad sweeping authority and such unlimited funding with which to carry out its 
direct and lateral objectives.  This authority is abused (1) in the unwarranted seizure of 
private property under eminent domain procedure; and (2) in distorting true scientific 
objectivity of other agencies and contractors through liberal funding of these groups.  
Thus, the U. S. Geological Survey, for example, receives much direct funding through the 
AEC, a procedure which Congress should never permit, consciously. 
 
                                                 
14 Tatum to Mellen, May 15, 1967, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-8 1963-67, Stennis Collection, 
MSUCPRC.   
 
 191 
Damages from the 1964 Salmon test had not been fully settled in some cases, he 
protested, and like Tatum, he wanted local firms to work at the site: ?there are many 
competent people in Mississippi who might perform this study [the assessment of the 
Tatum Dome regarding Payette] objectively ? but it is obvious that objective evaluations 
are not sought.?  Furthermore, Mellen was aware of what he feared was an all too cozy 
relationship between F&S and the AEC, and worried that F&S were working on a 
method of salt cavity excavation while under a government contract that they would later 
patent and use to monopolize the subterranean salt dome storage chamber industry.  
Mellen urged Murphy to conduct a Senate hearing on the AEC?s conduct in Mississippi 
and whether there had indeed been misappropriations or abuse of federal money 
concerning the Dribble program.15  
 Payette would also force the lease the AEC had signed with Tatum to last longer 
than originally planned.  It was estimated that from the issuance of the order to begin site 
preparation to the actual shot would take four years.  Two years? time was budgeted for 
excavation of the cavity alone.  It called for the creation of a deeper chamber than that 
created by the Salmon test and deeper than the planned Sand chamber.  Also, intensive 
surveys had to find entry paths to the salt dome that would avoid as many aquifer layers 
as possible.  Payette called for a substantial investment in simply creating the test site, 
and Mississippi would reap little benefit from the program.16 
 Thanks to events several thousand miles away, Payette was ultimately stillborn.  
The escalating hostilities in Vietnam drew billions of dollars away from the defense 
budget, including money intended for nuclear testing.  While America?s conventional 
                                                 
15 Mellen to George Murphy, May 15, 1967, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-8 1963-6, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC.   
16 Dean Warner, ?Project Payette? (August 19, 1966), 4, OSTI reference no. 434320. 
 
 192 
forces fought in a futile attempt to quell the communist insurgency in that nation, the 
fiscal burden was such that expensive programs were delayed and later terminated.  
Payette was also a victim of advanced mathematics.  Seeing that Sterling behaved exactly 
as predicted, and that it correlated with data collected from the excavated chamber high-
explosive tests during the Cowboy series, it became less necessary to fire decoupled shots 
in an excavated salt chamber.  The Piney Woods would experience no further nuclear 
tests.  Activities at the Dribble site, however, were far from over. 
 More than a year after Sterling, in January 1968, the AEC solicited bids to reopen 
the Salmon chamber to inspect the effects of the Sterling test.  This was not the only 
activity related to the VU program, as the fifth test of the series, 6kt shot ?Scroll,? 
exploded in a shallow shaft at NTS on April 23, 1968.  No more VU tests were planned 
for Mississippi, but that did not mean that the AEC was ready to surrender the Tatum 
Dome.  The Salmon cavity proved useable for future tests, but due to the expense and 
safety concerns attached to nuclear shots, more atomic testing there was immediately 
dismissed.  A data set regarding a nuclear test in a shot cavity had been created, and 
duplicating the results of Sterling with another nuclear shot was unnecessary.  
Suspending several hundred tons of high explosives in the chamber center to simulate the 
blast generated from a Sterling sized device was also impractical.  If a means were 
discovered that correlated to the Sterling blast wave, using conventional explosives, 
accurate decoupling tests could be conducted in areas unsuited for the risk of accidental 
radioactive release.  The AEC decided upon a simple explosive mixture of methane and 
 
 193 
oxygen that could be accurately measured and administered into the shot chamber with 
little or no chance of a radioactive release if something went wrong.17   
The AEC announced the new test program for the Dribble site on November 25, 
1968, called ?Miracle Play.?  It would consist of two, and possibly three, methane-
oxygen detonations to be conducted in the Salmon chamber.  The program configuration 
was well defined from the beginning, unlike the previous atomic tests.  The plans called 
for the two initial tests to yield 315 tons, with the third yielding just short of a kiloton, at 
890 tons.  This third test was optional, and depended on whether the chamber was 
sufficiently strong enough to handle the blast following the first two shots.  The AEC 
codenamed the Miracle Play tests ?Diode Tube,? ?Humid Water,? and ?Dinar Coin.?18 
Using methane/oxygen for the explosive mixture had advantages and drawbacks.  
The components were relatively cheap and a simple manifold allowed easy piping of the 
gases into the test chamber.  Ignited from a central point, the blast wave raced through the 
mixture, applying a nearly symmetrical shock wave to the chamber walls.  The amount of 
stemming needed to guarantee safety for a nuclear test was unnecessary with gas 
explosions.  A plug of cement grout and sand sufficed to prevent the gas detonation from 
reaching the surface.  The Salmon cavity became a combustion chamber.  The drawback 
to the methane/oxygen mixture was that the reaction generated water, which could 
eventually further degrade the salt walls.  Diode Tube was a straightforward test of the 
chamber and gas handling apparatus; Humid Water, as its name implies, investigated the 
deleterious effects that water had on the chamber and on the decoupled seismic signal.  If 
all went well, Dinar Coin would partially overdrive the chamber, generating energy too 
                                                 
17 Cochran, et. al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 168. 
18 O?Neill to Stennis, Nov. 25, 1968. Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-9 1968-70, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 194 
large for the cavity to fully decouple.  This could generate unexpected seismic noise, and 
would give test monitors certain parameters to determine whether a foreign test had been 
unsuccessfully decoupled.   
 Like they had done with Salmon and Sterling, the AEC convened a public 
meeting to inform the public about the new program that was to be conducted in their 
area.  Unlike the previous two meetings, AEC officials met with some outward 
resentment.  On December 17, 1968, about sixty people attended the meeting held at the 
Baxterville School.  The AEC laid out its case for the test program and its location at the 
Tatum site.  Because of the prior tests at the site, the gas tests had an excellent baseline 
with which to compare the data.  As with the Sterling test, reuse of instrumentation holes, 
combined with the cheaper gas detonations made the Miracle Play program extremely 
cost-efficient.   
That was not enough to placate residents in the area who felt that the nuclear 
testing program?s issues had not yet been resolved.  Since the Sterling meeting little more 
than two years before, people reported subsidence in the area that resulted in several 
buildings sustaining serious damage.  The AEC cannily applied a one-year limit on 
damage claims ? in other words, the AEC was ready to settle on acute damages, but 
chronic damage caused by factors like subsidence were excluded.  Obviously, the AEC 
felt that subsidence was not its problem.  However, the excessive ground motion from 
Salmon revealed the water-laden quality of the soil and underlying layers.  Should an 
aquifer have been diverted by the test so that its hydrostatic pressure did not aid in 
supporting the overlying strata, the resulting subsidence could have been attributable to 
the AEC?s activities.  In order to investigate this, more exploratory wells were needed, 
 
 195 
and wells cost money.  William Allaire, now deputy test manager, Nevada Operations 
Office, promised engineers to investigate the subsidence.  With the one-year limit, it was 
an empty promise.  One attendee at the meeting finally asked why the AEC still remained 
in the area, and wanted to know why they could not conduct their tests at NTS instead of 
in the Piney Woods.  David Miller of the NVOO public affairs office explained that there 
were no salt domes at the Nevada site ? at least none approaching the size of the Tatum 
Dome.  If the AEC had similar formations in Nevada, they would use them, because it 
would be far cheaper; this invited the retort: ?It would be cheaper for us too.?  It is 
probable that this sentiment was a key to why the AEC increased their isolation from 
those around the test site.  Atomic testing bore certain responsibilities, but gas explosions 
did not.  The Miracle Play tests were small, they were non-nuclear, and there was no 
reason to embark on a public relations crusade among a population growing tired of the 
AEC?s presence.19 
 Diode Tube, the first test of the Miracle Play series, was scheduled for January 6, 
1969.  To no one?s surprise, it did not take place.  Equipment delays and changing 
construction requirements pushed the date back a week; then two, then three.  The valves 
for the piping system that injected the gases into the chamber arrived late to the site.  For 
increased safety, the cement grout plug increased in depth from 65 feet to 400 feet.  
Originally the sand backfill extended upwards 345 feet from the top of the grout plug.  
This was increased as well, to reach ground level.  Problems with the firing circuitry 
caused Diode Tube further delays.  The mixed gas stayed sealed in the chamber while 
technicians traced the wiring faults. No one expected any perceptible motion from the 
                                                 
19 ?Summary of Dec. 17, 1968, meeting at the Baxterville school,? attached to Stradinger to 
Overby, Jan. 8, 1969, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-9 1968-70, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC. 
 
 196 
detonation, just as the experts had predicted before Sterling.  But not all were reassured: 
Talmadge Saucier, circuit clerk for the city of Purvis, circulated a petition to stop the 
tests, citing safety concerns and the problem with building subsidence in the area.  This 
petition, in addition to several letters, was not enough to halt Miracle Play, but they 
underscored the growing resentment of the AEC at the Tatum Dome.20  
 At 7:15 AM, February 2, 1969, the test finally took place.  Like the Sterling shot, 
observers nearly a mile from Station 1A felt a slight motion, while the real proof of 
success was recorded on paper by a battery of seismographs placed around the site.  As 
expected, Diode Tube yielded about 315 tons of explosive energy, and thanks to its low 
yield, non-radioactive nature, and integrity of the salt dome, the test was conducted 
without the need for costly evacuations or roadblocks.  Ironically, this likely added to the 
growing antipathy of the local population.  During Salmon and Sterling, the residents 
were at least active (and paid) participants.  Despite Salmon?s repeated delays, it was a 
cause for picnics and trips to the observation points; it was an opportunity to mingle, 
enjoy cold drinks and meet news reporters.  Salmon was a big story, important to the 
world, and thus the people around the test site felt important.  They had their pictures in 
the newspapers.  Some of them had their very lives opened up to the world.  People read 
about Claudette Ezell and her plaster plaques and Mrs. Jones?s new clothes dryer, waiting 
until Salmon was finished to have it connected.  There was the Saul family, anticipating 
the results of the shot, and the mess on Horace Burge?s floor.  This was missing from 
Diode Tube.  There was little local participation, and what happened at the site had little 
to do with the people around it.  Scientists and technical personnel were now intruders, 
                                                 
20 ?AEC Bulletin HA 68-9,? Jan. 16, 1969; O?Neill to Stennis, Jan. 27, 1969; petition and letters 
from Talmadge S. Saucier to Stennis Dec. 23, 1968, AEC bulletins, Jan. 31, 1969 and Feb. 1, 1969, 
Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-9 1968-70, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC.  
 
 197 
conducting further tests on an enclosed site, and having little effect on those around it.  
As Schulman notes, the majority of personnel involved in defense work were imported 
from elsewhere, with locals occupying ?manual and custodial positions.?  Although the 
Dribble site employed local drillers during its construction, later site operations relied on 
non-Mississippians.  The outsiders may as well have been tinkering in a secret laboratory 
somewhere.  The benefits of an AEC presence in the Piney Woods were growing more 
questionable by the day.  Diode Tube was done.  Humid Water was scheduled to quickly 
follow it, and if feasible, Dinar Coin.  This third shot bore the only possibility that people 
living around the site would need to prepare or evacuate.21   
 Humid Water, the second Miracle Play test, was originally planned for mid-
February.  A month-long delay stretched to well over a year, with the test finally being 
scheduled for April 21, 1970, following reentry, ventilation, and inspection of the cavity.  
The bleeddown facility handled the waste gases and whatever radioactive materials freed 
by the Diode Tube explosion, and site personnel recharged the cavity with its explosive 
mixture.  Once again nature stepped in to influence the test program.  The Dribble site 
was originally selected for its geology, not its weather.  Hurricanes, tropical storms, and 
unfavorable winds had all delayed the tests at the Tatum Dome, but this time the weather 
accelerated the pace of testing.  On April 19, two days before the planned test, a 
particularly violent spring thunderstorm blew up over the test site, replete with high 
winds, heavy rain, and at least one unfortunate bolt of lightning.  Immediately after the 
flash, security guards at the site felt a low rumble under their feet.  The lightning had 
discharged into the chamber and ignited the mixture.  Fortunately some of the 
                                                 
21 AEC Bulletin HA:68-13, Feb. 2, 1969, Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-9 1968-70, Stennis 
Collection, MSUCPRC; Schulman, ?From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt,? 257. 
 
 198 
seismographic equipment was operating and managed to catch the shock waves from the 
blast, allowing the AEC to confirm that Humid Water had indeed detonated.  But it 
quickly became clear that lightning posed a threat to any gas detonations, and lightning is 
common throughout the area all year long.  An expensive war, a declining national 
economy, and a growing desire to move operations to a centralized location caused the 
AEC to reassess their offsite testing.  Save for Plowshare tests and the two tests 
conducted in Alaska, America?s atomic testing program retreated to NTS, where the AEC 
conducted the sixth VU test, Diamond Dust, on May 12.  There, the relative ease in 
conducting actual nuclear tests rather than relying on gas detonations rendered Dinar 
Coin unnecessary.  The AEC released news of its cancellation on June 23, 1970.22 
 The fate of the Dribble site had actually been determined before the Diode Tube 
test, when the DMA notified the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) and NVOO 
on January 31, 1969, that DARPA would have no further use for the Tatum site following 
the conclusion of Miracle Play.  Decommissioning and disposal procedures outlined well 
in advance would begin following either Humid Water or Dinar Coin.  These were 
intended to bring the site back to a condition where it could safely be returned to the 
Tatum and Bass families.  The AEC lease on the 1,430 acres over the Tatum Dome was 
set to expire on June 30, 1971, although it was subsequently extended for a year. The 
AEC planted trees and other vegetation to control erosion around the site.  They also 
removed or dismantled most of the buildings on the site, and removed excess machinery 
and hardware to be reused or sold as surplus.  Foundation slabs roads on the site were left 
in place.  Clean-up personnel incinerated or buried non-radioactive trash and debris.  
                                                 
22 AEC bulletin from O?Neill to Stennis, Apr. 22, 1970; O?Neill to Stennis, Jun. 23, 1970; both in  
Subseries: Tatum Salt Dome T-9 1968-70, Stennis Collection, MSUCPRC; Cochran, et. al., Nuclear 
Weapons Databook, 169. 
 
 199 
Once they were finished at the Tatum Dome, the AEC had no desire to leave much 
tangible evidence of its presence.23 
 As for the other evidence of their activities at the Dribble site, the AEC noted 
several locations where radioactive materials were present.  As all of the contaminated 
materials had resulted solely through drillback operations, AEC personnel disassembled 
all of the contaminated drilling equipment, storage tanks, piping, and valves.  These items 
were partially decontaminated and sent to NTS for storage.  Low-level radioactive waste, 
including rags, coveralls, contaminated paper, and other debris were packed in drums and 
likewise removed to NTS.  The real problem resided in the quantity of contaminated soil, 
mud, and water.  The latter was primarily disposed of by pumping it into the HT-2 well 
and injecting it into the deep brine aquifer that had served as a receptacle for drilling 
wastes from the Baxterville oilfield.  Whether collected in the drilling sump, bleeddown 
tank, or the blooie tank, contaminated water was relatively easy to handle.  But it also 
collected in a large storage pond.  In addition, the large ?slush pits? used to hold spent 
drilling fluids and other debris were unlined.  This created contaminated mud that 
migrated slightly into the surrounding clay.24  
Drillback activities and the 1965 water/steam incident contaminated the soil at 
surface ground zero.  Slight contamination in the soil around the decontamination pad 
was detected.  Soil materials were not as easy to dispose of as the waste water.  Most of 
the heavily contaminated material generated by the tests remained encased in the melted 
salt at the bottom of the Salmon chamber.  Like the convenient brine aquifer, the test 
                                                 
23U. S. Atomic Energy Commisssion Site Disposal Report Tatum Salt Dome Test Site, 1-2, 10, 40,  
NTA accession no. NV0338578.  
24 Ibid., 25; U. S. Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office.  Special Study Tatum Dome 
Test Site Lamar County, Mississippi Final Report.  NVO-200 (Washington, DC: Government Printing 
Office,1978), 23-28. 
 
 200 
chamber itself became a waste repository.  The AEC simply dumped the more heavily 
contaminated materials and soil down the Station 1A hole.  The storage pond and holding 
pits were filled with uncontaminated soil once they were pumped dry and emptied of 
their radioactive burden.  After the last of the radioactive debris entered the chamber, the 
Station 1A hole was plugged for the last time and a granite marker and plaque placed at 
the site.  By April 1, 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission was ready to hand the land 
over the salt dome back to the original owners, with the agreement that United States 
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) personnel be allowed to visit the site regularly 
to monitor it for any radioactivity.  No future excavations would be permitted at the site, 
thus insuring the integrity of the chamber and isolating the radioactive wastes.25 
Along with the notification that the AEC was returning the site to the original 
owners came the news that it was terminating its presence in Hattiesburg, save perhaps 
for one or two personnel.  This laid off at least a dozen people; the drilling firms that 
played such a critical role in the program were long gone.  All in all, Mayor Paul Grady 
managed to put a happy face on the situation in a letter to AEC manager Robert Miller:  
 
Thank you for your nice letter informing us of the complete closeout and 
cleanup of the Tatum Salt Dome operation near Baxterville.  Working with your 
people during this project was most enjoyable and they were all good citizens 
while in our community. 
You are to be commended for the type of personnel you must have 
especially screened for this project.  Please convey to them that our community is 
a richer place by having shared this portion of their life with them. 
Should we be able to work with you in the future, in any matter, please 
inform us accordingly.  Warm personal regards.26 
                                                 
25U. S. Atomic Energy Commisssion Site Disposal Report Tatum Salt Dome Test Site, 31, 36, 40, 
NTA accession no. NV0338578; Robert E. Miller to Mayor Paul Grady, Mar. 31, 1972, folder 1, box 29: 
Mayor Paul Grady: Atomic Energy Commission (1962-1972; Undated).  M208 MCAUSM. 
26 Miller to Mayor Paul Grady, Mar. 31, 1972; Grady to Miller, dated Apr. 11, 1972, both in 
Records, folder 1, box 29: Mayor Paul Grady: Atomic Energy Commission (1962-1972; Undated), M208 
MCAUSM. 
 
 201 
 
 
VU was finished too.  The DARPA program that began in 1960 ended on July 1, 
1971, in an 875-foot-deep shaft at NTS.  The test, noted like the two previous VU shots, 
is listed as being less than 20kt.  It had been a period of unprecedented seismic research 
that led the way to the 1975 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT), limiting all underground 
tests to no more than 150kt.  Despite the end of the VU program, the sealed Salmon 
chamber at the Tatum Dome would play a crucial role in another important debate.27   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
   
         
                                                 
27 Cochran, et. al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, 169. 
 
 
 202 
Chapter Nine 
Nuclear Waste 
 
 By the time of its decommissioning, the Dribble test site changed from an 
enormous laboratory to a massive liability.  Slated for six nuclear detonations, it saw only 
two.  It was then to host three methane-oxygen detonations, of which only two actually 
occurred.  The cavity excavated by the Salmon shot of 1964 proved reusable, yet it 
showed deterioration after the second Miracle Play shot.  When the methane was 
oxidized in the chamber, it produced water vapor, which worked its way into the cracks 
and microfractures in the cavity walls.  As a result, the blast and water-weakened walls 
threatened to crumble.  This did not affect the overall integrity of the Tatum Dome, 
because compared to the size of the overall diapir, the Salmon cavity was tiny and buried 
deep within the dome.  It did mean that the chamber was useless for further research, and 
unless the AEC intended to excavate another cavity by means that had already proved 
useless, or through detonating another device and risking further damage claims from the 
already annoyed residents around the test site, the agency would only extend the lease 
over the salt dome for as long as it took to perform the cleanup and remediation activities.   
 Radioactive contamination first reached the surface during the 1965 reentry of the 
Salmon chamber.  Salt from the immediate vicinity of the chamber was radioactive, 
which was one way the work crews knew that they were reaching their target.  Drilling 
fluid, or ?mud,? an oily material containing clays and other minerals, cooled and 
lubricated the drilling head.  Mud also played a critical role in drilling because it 
constantly washed away the cuttings created by the drilling head.  The mud then flowed 
back to the surface through the shaft, filtered to remove the spoil, and then reused if 
 
 203 
needed.  Radioactive mud was a different story, because it could not be reused.  It was 
collected in large storage pits near the drilling derrick.  Because it was not intensely 
radioactive, storing it in the large pits seemed safe.  But the unlined pits were not the 
most secure means to store these fluids, despite their being excavated in thick clay.  In 
addition the Piney Woods region experiences occasional heavy downpours.  The test site 
had several creeks on it and ponds not far from surface ground zero.  Surface and 
underground water was plentiful, and water-soluble radioisotopes were plentiful as well.  
It would be analogous to locating a maximum security prison next to a mass 
transportation station.  Security is generally very good, but once the convict is out, there 
are numerous routes of evasion and escape; returning the convict to his cell becomes 
difficult, if not impossible.1 
 In order to combat the possibility that radionucleides could escape containment, 
the AEC initiated a large cleanup beginning in May 1971 that quickly outstripped its 
estimates.  Soil, water, and vegetation analyses indicated that the primary contaminants at 
the site were tritium (3H) and radioactive antimony-125 (Sb-125).  An onsite monitoring 
laboratory staffed by eight personnel constantly assessed samples collected from different 
locations and soil depths to identify where more active decontamination measures needed 
to be taken.  Initially, the AEC thought that 1,400 cubic yards of soil would require 
removal and disposal; in actuality more than 11,000 cubic yards of soil were taken from 
the surface and the disposal pits and fed through a shaft into the Salmon chamber.  Large 
clods of earth that were too big to fit down the shaft required breaking by hand.  The 
process was expensive, costing roughly $40 per cubic yard to remove and dispose.  The 
                                                 
1 U. S. Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office.  Special Study Tatum Dome Test Site 
Lamar County, Mississippi Final Report.  NVO-200 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,1978), 
23-28. 
 
 204 
AEC likewise underestimated the volume of liquid wastes and contaminated water: 
originally estimating 77,000 gallons, ultimately more than 1,300,000 gallons poured into 
the Salmon chamber.  In part, this increased volume of material was due to the stringent 
decontamination standards imposed by the AEC, and it was also due to cross-
contamination of previously cleared sites which then required further excavation.  
Ultimately site remediation workers filled these excavations with clean soil and leveled 
them with the surrounding soil.  On occasion, workers were mildly contaminated due to 
soil and fluid contact occurred, requiring little more than soap and water to remove the 
materials from their skin.2    
 In other areas of the site, personnel prepared larger objects from Dribble for 
transportation, including contaminated drilling equipment and chemically jelled liquid 
wastes, for rail shipment to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee for 
disposal.3  The preparation of these materials included beating the scale and rust off the 
metal parts and spraying them with a protective material to keep the surface isolated from 
the environment during transportation.   Pipes and tubing had end caps attached to ensure 
that no contaminants escaped.  ORNL?s ability to handle contaminated materials from 
Dribble became limited due to the quantity of wastes it received from other sources.  The 
AEC then considered the Savannah River site in South Carolina for permanent storage of 
the coated drilling threads, contaminated casings, derrick components, valves, tanks, and 
other miscellaneous objects. In the end, the effect on public opinion nullified this plan.  
The sight of trucks bearing the black and yellow radiation hazard markings hauling 
                                                 
2 Bruce W. Church, ?Nevada Operations Overview? and Arden E. Bicker, ?Site Decontamination? 
in George A Cristy and Helen C. Jernigan, eds., Environmental Decontamination: Proceedings of the 
Workshop December 4-5, 1979 Oak Ridge Tennessee (Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1981), 
62, 91-95, OSTI  no. 6529387.  Obtained through www.osti.gov (accessed Sept. 30, 2009).    
3 This would have been liquids other than tritium-contaminated water. 
 
 205 
contaminated loads over public highways was not desirable.  In addition, the AEC had to 
consider the risks of barging the contaminated steel through the Intracoastal Waterway, 
around Florida and up the East Coast to Savannah River, an estimated journey of nine 
days.  A sunken barge would quickly amount to both a navigation and an environmental 
hazard.  Ultimately, contaminated materials from the Dribble site arrived at NTS via 
eighteen railroad flatcars, a low-visibility alternative that allowed the AEC to sequester 
these artifacts for long-term desert storage with a minimum of risk.  As far as the AEC 
was concerned, it was a case of ?out of sight, out of mind.?  Overall, the 1971 
decontamination effort in Mississippi cost $1,080,000.4   
 Radioactivity was only part of the problem for the crews working to restore the 
test site.  It had hosted numerous ground vehicles in addition to a number of helicopters 
when test operations were active.  Vehicles and machines required fuel and lubricants, 
and occasionally they broke down and needed to be repaired.  Field equipment required 
cleaning with powerful degreasers and solvents.  There was an electrical substation at the 
test site; when transformer equipment failed or cracked, the oils contained inside could 
leak into the soil.  The oils contained high levels of poly-chlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, 
considered to be a health risk.  Generators at the site used diesel oil, and the cabling 
contained copper and chemicals in its insulation.  While teams sought radioactive 
decontamination at the Dribble site, they frequently instead came across more 
conventional types of chemical pollution.  Many of the contaminants were known by the 
                                                 
4 Memo, Donald H. Edwards to William D. Smith Jr., re: Disposal of Liquid Radioactive Waste.  
OSB:JRM-1829, Dec. 15, 1966,  NTA accession no. NV0095861; memo Otto H. Roehlk to W. W. Allaire, 
re: Contaminated Liquid ? Project Dribble OSB:WRB-446, April 14, 1966, NTA accession no. 
NV0096184; U. S. Atomic Energy Commission.  Status and Alternative Plans for Cleanup Preparatory to 
Disposition of Tatum Salt Dome Test Site (Dribble/Hattiesburg), Report to the Assistant General Manager 
for Military Application by the Manager, Nevada Operations Office (NVOO), undated (written after May 
1970), NTA accession no. NV0095768; Church, ?Nevada Operations Overview? and Bicker, ?Site 
Decontamination,?in Cristy and Jernigan, eds. Environmental Decontamination, 62, 94, OSTI no. 6529387. 
 
 206 
Environmental Protection Agency to be carcinogenic as well as being water-soluble.  
Radiation was not the only hazard at the Tatum Dome; industrial chemicals presented 
their own threats to the environment at the site.5 
 The Dribble atomic tests answered many American questions regarding 
decoupling.  But theirs were not the only questions that required address.  A little more 
than half a year after the AEC began its remediation activities at the Tatum Dome, the 
Soviet Union embarked on its own decoupling experiment utilizing a large salt dome.  On 
December 22, 1971, they fired a fully-tamped device yielding 64kt in a salt formation at 
Bolshoy Azgir in Kazakhstan at a depth of 987 meters, or 3,238 feet.  The result of this 
shot, designated A-III, was similar, but on a larger scale, to the Salmon shot conducted 
seven years earlier; the blast formed a nearly spherical chamber 36 meters (119 feet) in 
diameter.  A-III was part of a series of tests, designed to explore the capability of nuclear 
devices to create useable subterranean storage cavities.  Comprising ten tests in total, this 
program was notable in that six tests were conducted in a shot-generated cavity created 
by the detonation of the 27kt A-II test that had been fired in 1968.  Once the cavity was 
filled with water, the six later shots were used to test methods of isotope generation.  The 
chamber created by A-X, the last of the series detonated in 1979, was ultimately put to 
use as a nuclear waste receptacle, like the Salmon chamber.6  
 On March 29, 1976, Soviet researchers initiated a decoupling test designated A-
III-2.  At 8kt, the blast was one-eighth the yield of the shot that created the A-III 
chamber, and detonated at the center of the void as Sterling had been in 1966.   In 
                                                 
5 U. S. Department of Energy, Salmon Site Remedial Investigation Report, Volume I ?DOE/NV?
494-Vol. I/Rev.1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1999), 1-10-1-12. 
6 L.A. Glenn, ?Comparing U. S. and Russian Experience with Cavity Decoupling In Salt,? 
Geophysical Research Letters, 20 (May 1993): 919; Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, 476-
77,512, 541.   
 
 207 
contrast, the Sterling test at the Tatum Dome yielded 380 tons, not quite a fourteenth of 
the 5.2kt that created the Salmon cavity.  The results could not have been more different.  
Where the Salmon/Sterling decoupling test produced a decoupling effect of 72, the larger 
Soviet decoupling test produced an observed decoupling effect of 11.7.  Theories as to 
why this discrepancy was so pronounced centered on the thermal effects caused by the 
larger yield of A-III.  Its blast would have caused the same microfracturing as seen in the 
Salmon chamber, but the overall heat released by the blast was far greater, and it 
remained in the chamber far longer.  Thus the chamber walls were hotter when A-III-2 
was detonated.  This had the effect of allowing the seismic energy from the 8kt shot to 
radiate outward more efficiently, overriding the chamber?s ability to decouple the seismic 
signal.  Clearly, shot-generated cavities behaved unpredictably; the only way to raise the 
likelihood of full decoupling was to excavate the shot chamber, and that would produce 
detectable evidence.7  
 The A-III-2 decoupling test may have been preplanned or it may have been driven 
by diplomatic developments: the TTBT was a direct result of the research conducted 
during the VU program and bolstered by the Soviet tests at Azgir.  Representatives of the 
United States and Soviet Union signed the treaty on July 3, 1974 and submitted to 
Congress a little more than two years later.  VU assumed critical importance with the 
diplomatic efforts to create the 1963 LTBT.  VU developed methods so that seismic 
signals from underground Soviet tests could be detected and analyzed for technical 
development and prevent hiding of nuclear tests.  Technical means created and tested 
during the VU series led directly to supporting the TTBT, creating the ability to create 
                                                 
7  Glenn, ?Comparing U. S. and Russian Experience with Cavity Decoupling In Salt,? 919, 921. 
Glenn cited an 8kt yield; Podvig lists the shot as being 10kt.  As the comparative decoupling effects come 
from Glenn?s article, his lower yield is used. 
 
 208 
and enforce treaties limiting the yields of underground testing.  When testing moved 
underground in 1963, there were no yield limits.  Megaton-size underground shots were 
uncommon, but both sides conducted them.  Primarily, these consisted of weapons tests: 
America?s largest underground test, the 5mt Cannikin shot in November 1971 at the 
Amchitka, Alaska, site, tested a warhead for the proposed Spartan antiballistic missile 
system.  The largest underground Soviet nuclear tests on record were likely twice this 
yield.  The TTBT put a ceiling of 150kt on all testing, although combined device tests 
were allowed a 1.5mt yield limit.8  
 Such was the desire to cooperate in limiting their arsenals and testing programs 
that the treaty signatories obeyed the TTBT provisions even though they did not take full 
effect until 1990.  The Soviet Union?s last test officially to exceed 150kt was at the end of 
October 1975; the last American test to do so was at the end of March 1976.  The reason 
the TTBT?s provisions were prematurely honored was twofold: first, the Soviet 
decoupling experiment showed that shot- generated cavity decoupling was unreliable.  
The vast difference between American and Soviet results showed that cheating was far 
too risky.  Though poorly decoupled, the 8kt Soviet test produced certain frequencies that 
indicated a probable decoupling attempt, despite the apparent success of the Sterling test 
in decoupling the device signal.  A detected low yield test accompanied by those 
particular signals would tip off the other side that something covert was going on.  
Consequently, the international uproar caused by solid evidence of such cheating would 
                                                 
8 Podvig notes at least three underground Soviet tests listed in the range of ?1,500-10,000?kt.  
They were conducted on Sept. 12, 1973, Oct. 27, 1973, and Nov. 27, 1974.  All three were weapons 
development tests conducted at the Novaya Zemlya range.  Pavel Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear 
Forces, 454, 522-25.  The provision for combined device tests was related to Plowshare and Peaceful 
Nuclear Explosions (PNE) where large excavation and earth moving projects utilized several nuclear 
devices detonated in concert.  The total yield could not exceed 1.5mt, which was the equivalent of ten 
devices at the TTBT limit of 150kt.    
 
 
 209 
result in the sort of negative public relations exposure that neither side wanted to risk, 
especially while both superpowers continued to align developing nations towards their 
respective blocs.9   
The second reason for the success of the TTBT before its official enforcement 
was that warhead size was shrinking due to the dramatic increase in accuracy of ballistic 
missiles between 1964 and 1976.  Initially, yields for intercontinental ballistic missile 
(ICBMs) warheads were in the high kiloton or megaton range.  This was a function of 
accuracy, or rather inaccuracy.  To destroy a city or a military installation with a missile 
that likely would not strike closer than a mile from the target required an enormous yield.  
This was a wasteful way to conduct a nuclear war because it meant area destruction 
instead of target destruction.  In addition, it could not guarantee target destruction if the 
target was sufficiently hardened against weapon effects, or located underground.  Missile 
guidance improvements and development of multiple individually-targeted reentry 
vehicles (MIRV) moved both nations away from the brute force approach.  The 1972 
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) limited the number of delivery vehicles, not 
warheads.  Thus it was possible to increase a nation?s nuclear warhead count while 
maintaining or lowering the actual number of missiles by the simple expedient of putting 
multiple warheads on each missile.  In order to do this, the warhead weights needed to be 
lowered.  Guidance improvements, which allowed individual MIRVs to impact much 
closer to their targets, aided the process.  Militarily, it is foolish to expend a megaton on a 
target that can be destroyed by a 100kt warhead.  Accuracy and MIRVs led to smaller, 
lighter, and lower-yield warheads; large weapons did not need further testing to prove 
                                                 
9 Glenn, ?Comparing U. S. and Russian Experience with Cavity Decoupling In Salt,? 919, 921. 
 
 
 210 
that they worked, but the newer and smaller ones were the products of innovative 
weapons designs and needed testing.  High-yield single-warhead ICBMs remained in 
smaller numbers in both arsenals for use against special targets, such as the North 
American Air Defense (NORAD) command center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.  
Paradoxically, the increase of smaller weapons made nuclear war more dangerous and 
more likely.  But it also meant that there was little reason to test anything above 150kt.10 
 While the superpowers cautiously worked towards the TTBT, the Dribble site 
slowly returned to its pre-test condition.  The return of the land over the Tatum Dome to 
its original owners was not without special provisions. There were quarterly visits from 
the EPA and the USPHS for well water sampling and annual radiation monitoring.  The 
land reverted to its original state once the fences came down.  Deer and other wildlife 
roamed freely, and curiosity seekers and hunters walked across the former center of the 
AEC?s attentions.  Except for the granite marker and bronze plaque at the site that 
occasionally caught a hunter?s bullet and signs indicating the locations of monitoring 
wells, the Tatum land began to look like it once had.  EPA monitoring noted the presence 
of tritium and other contaminants at the site, but nothing raised much concern; the 
majority of the radiological pollution was interred in the Salmon chamber and the 
remainder was staying safely onsite.  But the Tatum Dome itself had become a 
radioactive waste site, and by the late 1970s it became possible that some of Mississippi?s 
other salt domes could join it.  Less than a decade after the Tatum family had regained 
possession of their land, radiation fears thrust the salt dome back into public debate.  The 
                                                 
10 For further information on the development of increasingly accurate ballistic missiles and 
MIRV technology, see Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile 
Guidance, (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2001).  Tables on 428-29 show the 
comparative improvements in missile accuracy between the United States and Soviet land based and 
submarine-launched missiles.      
 
 211 
rush to build nuclear power plants in the 1950s and 1960s led to a rapid buildup of 
nuclear reactor waste by the 1970s, and there was no place to dispose of it permanently.  
The massive salt diapirs along the Gulf Coast, which proved effective for natural gas and 
petroleum storage, offered an environment where reactor waste could be stored 
indefinitely.  The growing environmentalist movement sought to restrict locations where 
nuclear waste could be stored.  The Tatum Dome ultimately became an unlikely 
battlefield where science and public opinion clashed over the usefulness of Mississippi?s 
salt domes as nuclear waste repositories.11   
 America?s nuclear industry generates copious amounts of radioactive waste.  
Foremost are the residues from nuclear weapons material production and spent fuel 
assemblies from reactors.  Highly radioactive and corrosive, these are some of the most 
dangerous human-produced substances on the planet, but they are not the only source of 
radioactive pollution.  Everything that was contaminated, from paper towels used to wipe 
up small radioactive spills to contaminated coveralls, shoe covers, air filters, steel tubing, 
machinery, vehicles, and decommissioned reactor components had to be specially 
disposed of.  Low and mid-level wastes were occasionally packed into marked fifty-five-
gallon steel drums and dumped into landfills or into the open ocean.  High-level wastes 
were either stored at nationally-run repositories such as ORNL, Hanford, Washington, or 
NTS.  Spent reactor fuel rods were generally stored onsite at the plant that had used them 
for producing electricity.  The growing focus on indiscriminate nuclear waste dumping 
during the 1970s caused the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 
                                                 
11Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation. Final Report on Decommissioning Boreholes and 
Wellsite Restoration, Gulf Coast Interior Salt Domes of Mississippi, Revision 0.  Report Number 
DOE/CH/10285?T1 (1989), 6,  OSTI no. 10122492.  
  
 
 212 
successors to the AEC, to evaluate numerous and varied geologic formations for their 
suitability as long-term nuclear waste repositories.  Several factors involved in the 
process of selecting such candidate sites, such as geologic isolation, stability, the 
possibility of water intrusion, and the likelihood of tectonic activity, excluded many 
locations.  But salt domes looked promising for waste isolation purposes.  Ideally, an 
older, stable and moderately-deep salt dome could contain a repository for thousands if 
not tens of thousands of years.  Eight salt domes along the Gulf Coast region were 
selected in 1978 for special study; three of these domes were located in Mississippi: the 
Cypress Creek Dome, the Lampton Dome, and the Richton Dome.  The DOE further 
investigated the Cypress Creek and Richton Domes through sample core and water well 
drillings.  Quarterly monitoring of the water wells indicated the flow rate and direction of 
local aquifers, in order to avoid the problems encountered at the Tatum Dome.12 
 Public reaction to the program was not overly positive.  The most favorable 
location, Richton Dome, was two miles from the center of the town of Richton, 
Mississippi, which would have been within the security exclusion area for the waste site.  
The same pitch was delivered to the citizens surrounding the salt domes as had been 
given to the residents of Lamar and Forrest counties, that a government installation meant 
jobs and income.  But the AEC and the other organizations at the Dribble site wore out 
their welcome by becoming quiescent after the first test, and it was unlikely that periodic 
bulletins would accurately report the classified contents and their status in a salt dome 
repository.  Except in case of an accident, the chosen site would become a black hole, as 
the Dribble site became during the Miracle Play series. 
                                                 
12 Ibid.  
 
 213 
Two events within days of one another in March 1979 virtually killed the 
initiative to build a waste repository in Mississippi?s salt domes.  One was a little-
reported incident involving Bufo terrestris, or the Southern toad, while the other was 
America?s worst nuclear reactor accident at the Three Mile Island power plant near 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  On March 22, Dr. Edmund Keiser from the University of 
Mississippi?s biology department reported finding disturbing evidence that all was not 
well at the Tatum Salt Dome.  Part of the remediation at the former test site involved 
collecting and analyzing biological specimens, especially those with a high propensity for 
environmental contaminant absorption, from various locations around the area in 
conjunction with well monitoring and soil analysis.  Small fish and minnows, low on the 
food chain, effectively concentrated any contaminants found in surface waters.  Farther 
up the food chain, amphibians such as frogs, toads, and salamanders, not only 
accumulated toxins found in the water but also soil-borne contaminants.  They absorbed 
these chemicals primarily through their diets as well as their skin.  In essence, they were 
canaries in the coal mine; these living biological alarms reflected any slight change in 
their environment.  Any contaminants that were present would concentrate in their livers.  
Keiser and his assistants collected several specimens that week around the Tatum Dome, 
noting what looked to be skin irritation and a few cases of toads with deformed feet.  
When they returned with their collection to the biology department, they got a major 
shock.  One of the toads was dangerously radioactive, containing what initially appeared 
to be americium, which is formed when plutonium atoms capture extra neutrons without 
fissioning.  Like plutonium, americium does not occur in nature.13 
                                                 
13 Jackson Clarion-Ledger, March 22, 1979; Jackson Daily News, (Jackson, MS) Jun. 1, 1979, 
Subject File: Tatum Salt Dome, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (hereafter referred to as 
 
 214 
 Tritium was known to exist at the test site, and finding it there would have 
surprised no one.  Radioactive antimony-125 was also noted at the site.  Commonly used 
as an industrial tracer, it was easy to detect.  Americium was an entirely different matter.  
All of the radioactive contaminants at the Dribble site originated in the test chamber.  
That chamber had been reentered after each test shot for analysis and sample collection. 
Anything on the ground or in the water that issued radiation beyond background levels 
came from the two nuclear tests.  Except for the steam event following the Salmon test, 
contaminated solids and liquids produced during reentry drilling proceeded through the 
bleeddown plant for processing and storage.  Technicians retrieving samples from the 
Salmon chamber knew those materials to be radioactive, and handled them carefully.  For 
americium to be present in a toad?s liver, it had to come from the test chamber ? an 
extremely unlikely source.  Americium production is the result of slow neutron 
bombardment, such as in a reactor.  It is not the result of intense high-energy neutron 
bombardment, such as one finds in a nuclear explosion.  In addition, the level of 
radioactive emission coming from the specimen was intense, 1,000 times the allowable 
level set by federal guidelines for environmental samples.  Something critical had gone 
wrong at the Tatum Dome and it was leaking heavily contaminated material into the 
environment.  Somehow, somewhere, a seam or fissure had developed from the test 
chamber 2,700 feet below, or more likely, one of the well casings or plugs had failed.  It 
appeared the Tatum site was venting radioactive contamination into the environment.14 
 Keiser and his graduate student assistants found the samples shocking.  As 
members of the environmentalist group Sierra Club, parent organization of Greenpeace, 
                                                                                                                                                 
TSD-MDAH.) 
14 Jackson Clarion-Ledger, March 22, 1979; Jackson Daily News, June 1, 1979, TSD-MDAH. 
 
 215 
they passed the word to fellow members, including Ron Lewis, noted as one of the 
leading antinuclear activists in Mississippi.  Lewis then spoke to Keiser to confirm the 
findings.  Once confirmed, Keiser requested that Lewis not publicize the information 
until further analyses could be performed on the contaminated frog.  Lewis ignored him 
and passed the information all the way up to Governor Cliff Finch, who eventually 
sounded a general alarm.  At 3 A.M. on May 26, Lamar County sheriff?s deputies 
evacuated the residents around the test site.  Finch declared the area off-limits.  Despite 
the later realization that the radiation was coming not from americium, but from a highly 
radioactive isotope of sodium, called sodium-22, the samples continued to emit 
dangerously high levels of radiation.15  
 Less than a week after Keiser reported his radioactive samples, on March 28, 
1979, the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 
generated the greatest domestic nuclear hysteria since the Cuban Missile Crisis.16    The 
accident in the number two reactor seemed to spiral further out of control with every 
news bulletin.  Due to gross lack of oversight, the plant operated with equipment that had 
failed numerous times before in other plants, and possessed severely limited 
communications with the outside world.   After the accident occurred, it took hours to 
contact technicians to help with the situation.  The radiation release from the accident 
primarily remained onsite, although some radioactive gases entered the atmosphere, 
prompting Governor Richard Thornburgh to recommend a partial evacuation of children 
and pregnant women from the surrounding area.  The plant?s operator, Metropolitan 
                                                 
15 Jackson Clarion-Ledger, March 22, 1979, May 26, 1979, TSD-MDAH. 
16 Ironically, less than two weeks before the accident, The China Syndrome, a film starring Jack 
Lemmon, Jane Fonda, and Michael Douglas, opened nationally and was treated as antinuclear hysteria.  
One line in the film referred to an area the size of Pennsylvania being in danger of contamination from the 
fictional Ventana Power Plant in California. 
 
 216 
Edison Electric Company, frustrated state and local officials with a lack of timely and 
important information, while the NRC looked incompetent in dealing with the looming 
disaster that slowly evolved over a period of several days.17 
 TMI held the national attention for months because it was precisely the sort of 
event that the DOE and NRC insisted could never happen.  But it did happen: plant 
workers erroneously switched off safety systems and misread important gauges.  Before 
the first twenty-four hours had passed, a sizeable percentage of reactor number two?s core 
lay at the bottom of the pressure vessel.  The results of the accident were severe for the 
nuclear power industry: orders for new plants came to a screeching halt, and the 
emboldened antinuclear lobby seized upon the incident as further evidence that nuclear 
power was far too dangerous while operating under the vigilance of an untrustworthy 
government  regulatory body.  Nuclear power in America has yet to recover from the 
black eye it received from TMI. 
On the same day that the news about the reactor accident broke from Harrisburg, 
the Jackson Clarion Ledger printed a letter to the editor expressing one resident?s 
concern for the future of the state:  
 
I see that the U. S. Department of Energy has approved plans for further tests to 
determine if salt domes in Perry and Marion counties can be used for nuclear waste dump 
sites. DOE officials also met with Mississippi state officials, and the group reviewed the 
plans and found no reason why the field geologic tests should not be carried out. 
 Well, you don?t have to be a genius to know that after the tests are carried out the 
group will determine that Mississippi salt domes will be just great for nuclear waste 
dump sites. 
 The U. S. Energy Department is an agency of the same government that used the 
Tatum Dome as a nuclear testing site and then walked away leaving Tatum Dome 
radioactive for maybe the next 10,000 years. 
                                                 
17 Chana Gazit, Meltdown At Three Mile Island , VHS (Alexandria,VA: PBS Video, 1999). 
 
 217 
 From now on you don?t have to call us the ?Great State of Mississippi? and you 
don?t have to call us the ?State of Mississippi? and you don?t have to call us 
?Mississippi,? just call us the ?Radioactive Waste Dump for the U. S. A.?18 
 
This letter expressed the growing sentiments of many in Mississippi, who feared 
the federal effort to emplace dangerous materials in salt domes.  Especially poignant is 
the perception of the DOE?s efforts at the Tatum Dome.  Site remediation reports, though 
available, did not warrant front page news.  As far as most citizens knew, the site was still 
heavily contaminated, despite the work to safely inter the volume of waste and monitor 
the site for further contaminants.  The contribution to global nuclear arms control being 
ignored or forgotten, the Dribble publicly remained a scar on Mississippi?s image.  
Discovery of the contaminated toad further underscored the threat from nuclear waste.   
 Something did not seem quite right though, especially at the DOE office in Las 
Vegas.  Troy Wade, Deputy Director of the Nevada Operations Office, found the 
readings puzzling.  Noting that the toad situation at the Tatum Dome was unlike anything 
previously reported, he visited the site in order to collect more information and assist in 
the investigation of the contaminated animals.19  At the same time, Frank Tatum offered 
his opinion, in a newspaper interview, of the land he again owned:  
 
We got lots of contamination down there,? he said, pausing for a mock dramatic 
effect, ?of salt. S-A-L-T.  You know what that is?  And that?s it. 
 ?Cattle have been grazing on it.  Hunters have been hunting over it all the time.  
You can?t keep fences up.  Animals keep going in there to get that salt,? he said. ?If 
something was wrong, we?d have known by now.20 
  
                                                 
18 Jackson Clarion-Ledger, March 28, 1979, TSD-MDAH.   
19 Many years later, at a reception at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, 
Wade related to the author that the first indication that something was amiss with the radiation reports was 
when DOE personnel calculated that to concentrate and emit the levels of radioactivity that was being 
given off by the toad liver samples, the animal would have had to have weighed over 400 pounds. 
20 Jackson Clarion-Ledger, June 18, 1979, TSD-MDAH. 
 
 218 
Tom Humphrey, a geologist working for the DOE, was also unconcerned by the 
radioactivity that he encountered at the site.  Noting that the highest tritium levels his 
team had discovered were about a quarter of the allowable maximum for drinking water, 
he offered a novel solution he and his colleagues had developed for clearing out any 
accumulation of the isotope in their bodies: ?People working at the test site occasionally 
get minor doses of the tritium and our treatment is to drink as much beer as possible ? 
this simply flushes it out of the system.?21 
Nothing seemed to add up; more puzzling were the results when other portions of 
the toad were analyzed ? they showed only trace amounts of radioactivity.  Yet several 
scientists at the University of Mississippi laboratory and an FDA facility verified the 
radiation levels from the liver samples.  The discrepancy between the radiation levels in 
the liver and other organs revealed the error.  The toad itself contained no sodium-22, but 
the sample dish did.  The liver had been transported to various facilities and subjected to 
measurement by several instruments, all indicating strong levels of radioactivity.  The 
liver remained on the same dish during the whole time, confusing the readings.  At least 
one journalist had a hearty laugh at the expense of Keiser and the Ole Miss biology 
department; Keiser asserted that left to their own devices the error would have ultimately 
been discovered.  But under media and political pressure, they had missed it entirely.  
The incident made Keiser and those tasked with monitoring the former test site look 
incompetent.22 
Worse, and apparently not investigated, was the likelihood that the contamination 
was intentional.  Sodium is one half of the molecule that makes up salt.  Sodium-22 is a 
                                                 
21 Ibid, Aug. 15, 1979, TSD-MDAH. 
22 Jackson Daily News, June 1, 1979, TSD-MDAH. 
 
 219 
highly radioactive isotope, and it made sense that radioactive sodium might be found at a 
salt dome test site.  The animal tissues were not appreciably radioactive, so that once 
discovered it could easily be explained away as a simple case of laboratory equipment 
contamination.  Many of the graduate students in the laboratory associated with 
antinuclear activist Lewis, who ignored Keiser?s request to allow the laboratory 
thoroughly to confirm its findings.  Finally, it made a case that everyone opposed to the 
nuclear waste repositories in the salt domes could support: salt domes leak.  The Jackson 
Daily News story that finally revealed the errors noted that it may have been a ?college 
prank,? but if it was, it frightened the people around the Tatum Dome, and it undermined 
any trust in scientific monitoring at the site.  If it was a deliberate environmentalist 
action, the perpetrators ultimately saw their cause succeed, for in 1986 the Department of 
Energy removed the salt domes from consideration as waste depositories and instead 
concentrated on Yucca Mountain in Nevada.23   
Yet another crisis developing around the test site was purely human.  Despite 
assurances that the test site was safe, the government did admit that there was a certain 
amount of radioactive contamination at the surface and in the HT-5 injection well.  
Further studies revealed that tritium had indeed migrated into some of the subsurface 
water, but that it all remained securely located at the test site.  In the late 1970s and early 
1980s, a group of plaintiffs who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site (known as 
?downwinders?) and military veterans who had taken part in atmospheric atomic 
maneuvers finally won their battle to get documents declassified supporting their claims 
that the excessive amount of radiation to which they had been exposed had severely 
                                                 
23 Ibid.; Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation. Final Report on Decommissioning 
Boreholes and Wellsite Restoration, 6, OSTI no. 10122492.  
 
 220 
affected their health.  During the period of atmospheric testing in the 1950s and 1960s, 
some downwinders tried to take pictures of the mushroom clouds as they passed near 
their farms, only to have the intense radiation fog the film and render it nearly useless.  
Animals like sheep, cattle, and deer died after nuclear tests, killed by unknown means.  
Previously healthy livestock miscarried or gave birth to hideously mutated stillborn 
young.  And people living in the southwestern corner of Utah, who were repeatedly 
irradiated by fallout borne by the prevailing winds, started to show skin burns, bleeding 
gums, gastrointestinal problems, and leukemia.  They displayed clear symptoms of heavy 
radiation exposure but the federal government denied them any compensation because 
the evidence of the excessive fallout was classified for at least twenty-five years; in some 
cases it took repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act to acquire the 
necessary documentation to file claims against the government.24   
In the area around the Tatum Dome, people also got sick, although the cause was 
not as evident as it was in Nevada and Utah.  Many of them wondered whether their 
condition was due to the tests that had been conducted nearly two decades before.  
Repeated monitoring at the Dribble site showed that no contamination was moving offsite 
and that the tritium levels were rapidly falling off due to natural decay.  Still, with the 
scare caused by the 1979 toad incident and the horror stories reported in the news of 
governmental abuse and denial of radiation injuries, many began to wonder whether the 
same thing was occurring in the Piney Woods.  Because radioactivity is intangible, 
                                                 
24 For more information on the downwinders and their efforts to gain compensation from the 
government for radiation injuries, see Philip L. Fradkin, Fallout: An American Tragedy (Tucson: 
University of Arizona Press, 1989); John G. Fuller, The Day We Bombed Utah: America?s Most Lethal 
Secret (New York: New American Library, 1984); Thomas H. Saffer and Orville E. Kelley, Countdown 
Zero (New York: G.P. Putnam?s Sons, 1982); and Howard Ball, Justice Downwind: America?s Atomic 
Testing Program in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).   
 
 221 
except with measuring devices, explainable illnesses prompted fears that radiation was 
the culprit.25   
More troubling was that the DOE was not forthcoming with information.  The 
AEC had certainly been deceptive when dealing with the people living around NTS.  The 
agency cloaked information with excuses that the issues concerning peoples? lives were 
matters of national security and could not be discussed.  Periodic briefings and meetings 
would have allowed Tatum Dome area residents to address their concerns directly to the 
DOE, and provided them updates on monitoring results and an opportunity to speak 
personally to an official representative.  Ironically, the AEC held such meetings before 
conducting tests.  A grassroots demand for answers emerged in the Piney Woods, 
primarily as a result of the efforts of Hewie Gipson, a Lamar County resident living close 
to the test site.  Gipson tirelessly agitated for government attention and collected 
whatever documentation he could about site remediation.  According to him, ?dozens? of 
his friends and neighbors who lived near the test site had developed cancer.  In 1990 the 
DOE finally ordered further remediation studies to evaluate the site itself as well as a 
cancer survey of the area to determine whether there was a greater incidence of disease ? 
particularly leukemia - in the region.  The initial survey showed no anomalous disease 
levels when compared to the national average.  Nor did the comprehensive analysis 
performed by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality?s Division of 
Radiological Health.  As noted in the 1995 Baseline Ecological Risk Assessment 
(BERA), it also found cancer rates in accordance with the national average.26 
                                                 
25Hattiesburg American, Nov. 2, 1990; Jackson Clarion-Ledger, April 20, 1993,  TSD-MDAH  
26Jackson Clarion-Ledger, April 20, 1993, TSD-MDAH; IT Corporation, Baseline Ecological Risk 
Assessment: Salmon Site Lamar County, Mississippi  DOE/NV?394 UC-700 (Las Vegas: NVOO, 1995), 
34, OSTI no. 64136.   
 
 222 
One might wonder why a rural area would have a cancer average approaching or 
surpassing the national average.  Lamar County does have a Superfund site listed on the 
EPA National Priorities List, but it is not the Dribble site.  The Davis Timber Company 
was a lumber mill and processing facility that began operating in 1972 and declared 
bankruptcy in the late 1980s.  Located west of Hattiesburg, the factory used several 
chemicals in their processing facility that are known carcinogens, including dioxin, furan 
compounds, and pentachlorophenol.  These were present in discharged waste water, 
causing fish kills in a nearby lake as early as 1974.  Granted, the Davis operation is at 
least twenty-five miles from the Tatum Dome, but it also was not the only source of 
industrial chemical pollutants.  Historically, Lamar County depended on the timber and 
lumber industries.  In addition, chemicals released from other factories, diesel fuel, 
oilfield contaminants such as heavy metals from drilling mud, and pesticides all 
contributed to the wider environmental pollution in the region.  Mercury releases have 
been recently reported in several instances in Lamar County, requiring hazardous 
materials teams to respond and clean up the sites.  The region around the Tatum Dome 
looks pristine, but in reality it bears the invisible marks of industrial activity.27  
In this respect, Lamar County and the Tatum Dome area tragically resemble much 
of the more agricultural regions of the South.  Industrial chemicals and pesticides have 
been recorded there in hazardous quantities since the end of WWII, when the chemical 
industry manufactured substances to control the spread of agricultural pests.  Left to the 
caprices of the wind and water, these chemicals, insidious as radioactive fallout, spread 
beyond their intended areas of application, contaminating the environment.  Like fallout, 
                                                 
27 The information on the Davis Timber Company and the mercury leaks both come from the EPA 
website: http://www.epa.gov/region4/waste/npl/nplms/davtimms.htm (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). 
 
 223 
these chemicals, especially chlorinated hydrocarbons, remained deadly for a very long 
time.  Affecting the liver, skin, and nervous system, these chemicals caused illness and 
death among those sufficiently exposed.  Poorly regulated, such chemicals found their 
way into household use in the form of domestic insecticide products.  In addition to these 
contaminants, the aforementioned industrial chemicals created a background ?witches? 
brew? of exotic toxins, as difficult to ascertain in their effects as atomic radiation.28    
The 1995 BERA of the site concluded that radioactive materials were still present, 
but that their concentrations were low enough not to present an immediate threat to the 
surrounding environment.  Analyses conducted in several ecological ?pathways? for 
contamination proved to be mostly inconclusive.  The DOE and EPA sampled bodies of 
onsite water, including Half Moon Creek and Beaver Pond, for water and sedimentary 
contamination.  Their biota were likewise sampled and analyzed.  Benthic life, which 
includes organisms that live in the creek and pond bottoms and sediments appeared to be 
affected by something, but it was impossible to determine whether it was due to 
contaminants.  In fact, the report noted that apart from elevated aluminum and manganese 
levels in the water, contaminants were absent.  The tritium dosage absorbed by the fish 
taken onsite was determined to be far below levels that could warrant concern.  The 
tritium quantities were so low as not to pose a threat to the population of great blue heron 
in the area that subsists almost entirely on fish.  Barium and manganese occurred in 
substantial levels in sediment samples, but were not considered hazardous.29   
On land, the situation was different, where three identifiable areas emitted 
substantial radiation: a Clean Burn Pit not far from Station 1A to the northeast; an 
                                                 
28 Pete Daniel, Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South (Baton Rouge, 
Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 1, 3, 78, 130, 145-50, 169. 
29 IT Corporation, Baseline Ecological Risk Assessment, 149-50, OSTI no. 64136. 
 
 224 
electrical substation at the western side of the test site; and the area around the HT-2 
injection wells as a result of pumping contaminated waste water into the brine aquifer.  
Also, the area around the substation tested positive for high levels of copper.  These areas 
were not considered to threaten human or animal life, and awaited more thorough 
investigation when the DOE was able to further disturb the land; that measure had to wait 
until the department bought the land from the Tatum and Bass families.  The DOE 
initiated the purchase in 1994; by the time the 1995 BERA appeared, the government 
owned the land it had once leased from Frank Tatum.30  
Not only did the DOE determine the Dribble site to be of no threat to those living 
around it, but by 1999, it concentrated on the hazards the contaminants at the site posed 
to those hiking, working, or even living there.  Once the DOE owned the property over 
the salt dome, it engaged in cleanup activities of the identified areas of further concern.  
Attention was diverted towards the mud storage pit close to surface ground zero.  The 
DOE detected quantities of tritium and trichloroethane (TCE) below ground level, but 
excavations near the pit failed to show similar concentrations.  This indicated that the 
mud pit was successfully containing the contaminants.  Furthermore, despite the 
identification of several isotopes of lead, antimony, radium, and uranium, and the 
presence of arsenic on the site, concentrations of radioactive material were statistically 
low, and the arsenic, radium, and uranium were naturally occurring elements.  The 
scenarios analyzed during the 1999 Remedial Investigation included the potential cancer 
risks from radiological and chemical contaminants to park rangers working at the site, 
hikers and backpackers, and residents, especially young children who were more likely to 
eat dirt than adults, and thus consume possibly carcinogenic materials.  The report 
                                                 
30 Ibid. 
 
 225 
concluded that little risk existed.31  Considering water from onsite wells to be the most 
likely vector for radioactive contamination for those working or living onsite, in 1999 the 
DOE began installing a water system to service the homes in the Tatum Dome area; it 
could be easily extended onsite if future occupation looked likely and thereby relieved 
any dependence on well water.  Generally seen as a step to assuage the local population, 
the report pointed toward the Tatum Dome?s future.  EPA monitoring would continue for 
an indefinite period while the land reverted to its condition before the AEC came to the 
Piney Woods, or even before any member of the Tatum family first cut a tree in its 
forests.  By the turn of the millennium, it was felt that in the near future the former test 
site would serve as a working demonstration forest and wildlife refuge, and would 
eventually be returned to the state of Mississippi.  In a little more than a hundred years of 
heavy human activity, the area over the Tatum Dome had almost come full circle.32 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
31 Cancer risk is difficult to ascertain, and is based upon complicated statistical analyses.  
Similarly, cancer causation is also difficult to determine in many cases.  The acceptable levels at the 
Dribble site for carcinogens was low ? indeed in the matter of some radionucleides the allowable dose 
onsite was less than was generally found elsewhere due to the fallout deposited during atmospheric testing.  
The microdoses of industrial chemicals were likewise extremely low.  Still, they constituted a statistical 
risk. 
32 U. S. Department of Energy, Nevada Environmental Restoration Project, 201-12, OSTI no. 
14966.  
 
 226 
Conclusion 
 
Costly Success 
 
 
 In the latter part of 2008, the author visited the front gate at the Dribble site.  It 
was surrounded by tall fences and signs warning unauthorized personnel that they were 
being monitored.  Faded, barely legible signs from the time of test activity still clung to 
posts near the front gate.  A flatbed trailer sat in the tall grass in an adjacent field, 
apparently abandoned.  The road through the padlocked gate looked long unused, 
although with the recent heavy rainfall and the reddish, gravelly soil, it was hard to tell.  
On the DOE?s side of the fence, row after row of pine trees grew, contrasting with the 
brownish grass on the public side, making it look artificial.  Ironically, the Cold War 
laboratory had so many trees, one could not see much beyond the fence, while the 
surrounding area looked comparatively bare, and practically despoiled.  Then it became 
obvious: the trees looked unnatural, because trees do not grow in rows, and the ones there 
looked young ? perhaps planted in the late 1970s or 1980s.  It is hard to tell the age of 
pine trees by simple observation because they grow very quickly.   
 The Dribble site is not a state park, and it is uncertain whether it ever will be, or 
should be.  Local people still claim that cancer rates are high around the Tatum Dome, 
despite official reports. It may be that the fences will stay up until people forget why they 
are there, and eventually they will be taken down.  Occasionally newspaper articles and 
television news reporters revisit the activity at the site.  They are almost always wrong in 
failing to discern between ?bomb? tests and ?device? tests.  No one tested bombs at the 
 
 227 
Dribble site; they tested seismometers and theories.  And they tested the people who lived 
there, and their collective patience.1 
 What were the results of the activities at the test site?  Internationally, they were 
crucial.  The LTBT was hampered without a scientific means to verify distant 
underground tests and their magnitudes.  The ability to detect possible cheating by using 
decoupling to mask seismic signals was a further development that further reinforced the 
LTBT.  Subsequently, the TTBT was inconceivable without teleseismic monitoring and 
the scientific accuracy that allowed such a treaty to be enforced with the trust of both 
major superpowers.  Science, bolstering diplomacy, gave the superpowers a reason to 
trust each other.  They negotiated, and perhaps as a result, we did not enter into a 
thermonuclear war.  This is one of the major legacies of the Dribble tests. 
The technology developed during the Vela Uniform program led to improved 
seismic detection networks.  Despite the cessation of the United States testing program in 
1992, and the end of Soviet testing before the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, other 
nations have since joined the ?nuclear club? and tested their own devices.  Pakistan 
conducted a five-detonation underground series in 1998 on May 28, and a further test on 
May 30, with yields ranging from ?sub kiloton? (likely a partial or unsuccessful reaction, 
or ?fizzle?) to an estimated 12kt.   North Korea tested its first nuclear device on October 
16, 2006, with a yield estimated at less than one kt.  Seismic detection, coupled with air 
sampling, provided the conclusive evidence.  This indicated that the North Koreans 
accidentally or intentionally released radioisotopes into the atmosphere during their test.  
America still retains the ability to conduct atmospheric sampling, the originally 
                                                 
1 WLOX-TV, a Biloxi television station produced a two-part television report on the Dribble site in 2007.  
It is accessible at www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=7836706 (accessed Feb. 21, 2010); In addition, 
several years ago a newspaper widely appeared discussing the activities at the Dribble site.  
 
 228 
preferable method of assessing foreign tests.  It also shows a remarkable ability to detect 
and assess underground nuclear blasts with very low yields.2 
 Part of the nuclear test detection story is the civilian benefit.  One of the ways to 
ascertain whether a seismic event is an atomic test is to know where it has occurred, and 
how large it is.  The ability to quickly pinpoint the location, depth, and magnitude of an 
earthquake can save countless lives.  Despite the high death toll in the ?Christmas 
tsunami? on Dec. 26, 2004, the seismological systems functioned perfectly; people died 
because of poor communications and lack of local tsunami warning systems that would 
have saved tens of thousands of lives.  Monitoring personnel knew where the earthquake 
was and the likelihood of tsunami generation.  They were finally able to communicate 
with embassy personnel in countries in East Africa, to warn them of the impending 
danger, which did save lives.  
 What did Mississippi gain from the Dribble and Miracle Play tests?  Initially, it 
benefited, and some local firms found work at the site.  The MITRC was founded to 
further the state?s appeal to heavy and high-tech industry, and was not created solely to 
reap benefits from the Dribble program.  As a new state office, it sought to secure further 
benefits from the AEC program, either from contracts directly related to the tests, or from 
other programs.  This could have led to further embedding of nuclear technologies into 
the Piney Woods, resulting perhaps in the sort of technical, educational, and cultural 
effects that federal programs created in other southern states.  But as previously 
discussed, most of the valuable contracts went to outside firms.  The MCEC bid, held to 
be low on the list of bidders, was rejected with no apparent explanation.  There are 
                                                 
2 This information comes from the Federation of American Scientists website.  
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index.html; 
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html (accessed Oct. 2,2009) 
 
 229 
several reasons that this may have happened.  It may not have been the most competitive 
bid, or there may have been back room deals involved.  It may have been a political 
decision, for as noted, the relationship between state and federal governments in the case 
of defense contracts was not equitable.  The federal government controlled the purse.  It 
determined who was awarded prime contracts, and awarded them as it pleased.   
 Sadly, this extended to the particle accelerator program.  It appears that despite 
Hattiesburg?s eager presentation, and its willingness to accede to the AEC?s desire to 
conduct the atomic test program, it did not attract the facility, nor did it seem to have ever 
stood a chance to bring it to the Piney Woods.  The evidence strongly suggests that the 
decision was made in advance before the selection program began to award it to Texas 
A&M University.  Ultimately, the Dribble program achieved what the government 
wanted, and failed the residents of Lamar and Forrest counties. 
 The residents of the area were initially engaged in the program.  Most appear to 
have been tolerant of, or even excited by, the test program, and few expressed some 
worry, but the test dates when locals were evacuated and went to the viewing areas had a 
festival atmosphere.  Once the Salmon test was concluded and damage claims began 
rolling in to the Hattiesburg AEC office, the AEC became less forthcoming.  They could 
have employed more local firms at the site, retaining at the very least a working 
relationship with some local residents, allowing a tangible benefit to the community.  
They failed to do this, and instead small articles appeared in the Hattiesburg American 
regarding the number of damage claims.  To be sure, the AEC felt it had to protect itself 
against unwarranted claims ? it is impossible to imagine what liabilities such a test 
 
 230 
program would generate in today?s litigious society ? although in 1964, such 
opportunism appears to have been much more restricted.   
By the Sterling shot, the number of local residents actively participating in the 
program through evacuation had fallen considerably.  By the time Miracle Play was 
announced, public resentment was openly evident.  Local people were shut out of the 
activities at the site, and those conducting the gas detonations were simply outsiders.  
When the news of the downwinders became public after 1980, it took the NRC and the 
DOE years to address the worries and fears expressed by those living in the area.  These 
were people who had been frightened by the news reports from Three Mile Island in 
1979, and later roused from their beds thanks to environmental activists and a panicked 
governor; it took the DOE twenty years to install a public drinking water system in the 
area that removed the primary fear of aquifer contamination from local residents? minds. 
At the time of this writing, it has been a little more than forty-five years since the 
Salmon test.  Most of the tritium has decayed into stable isotopes of hydrogen, and the 
most dangerous materials are safely contained deep within the Tatum Salt Dome.  Except 
for the fences and signs at the gate, nothing hints at what occurred there.  There is a 
plaque on the granite marker at SGZ.  On the back side, it reads:  
?NO EXCAVATION, DRILLING AND / OR REMOVAL OF MATERIALS IS 
PERMITTED WITHOUT U. S. GOVERNMENT PERMISSION TO PENETRATE 
BELOW MEAN SEA LEVEL ON THE 1470 ACRE TRACT SITUATED WITHIN 
SECTIONS 11, 12, 13, AND 14, T2N, R16W, ST. STEPHENS MERIDIAN, 
MISSISSIPPI.?   
 
 
 231 
On the front, it bears a more descriptive plaque: 
UNITED STATES 
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 
ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY 
DR. E. RECTIN DIRECTOR 
PROJECTS DRIBBLE AND MIRACLE PLAY 
EXPERIMENTS IN THE VELA UNIFORM PROGRAM SPONSORED JOINTLY BY 
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION 
WERE CONDUCTED BELOW THIS SPOT AT A DEPTH OF 2700 AND 2715 FEET 
IN SALT. A 5.3 KILOTON NUCLEAR DEVICE WAS DETONATED ON OCTOBER 
22, 1964, KNOWN AS THE SALMON EVENT WHICH WAS THE FIRST OF THE 
DRIBBLE SERIES TO EVALUATE THE DECOUPLING PRINCIPLE AND TO 
STUDY SEISMIC WAVE PROPAGATION IN THE SOUTHEAST UNITED STATES. 
A 380-TON NUCLEAR DEVICE WAS DETONATED ON DECEMBER 3, 1966, 
KNOWN AS THE STERLING EVENT. OBJECTIVE OF THIS EXPERIMENT WAS 
TO DETERMINE THE EXTENT OF DECOUPLING OF A CAVITY IN SALT AND 
THE ACCURACY OF DECOUPLING CALCULATIONS. 
THE MIRACLE PLAY SERIES CONSISTED OF TWO GAS EXPLOSIONS WHICH 
WERE CONDUCTED IN THE CAVITY ON FEBRUARY 2, 1969, AND APRIL 19, 
1970. THE OBJECTIVE OF THESE EXPERIMENTS WERE TO DETERMINE THE 
DECOUPLING EFFECT OF EXPLOSIONS IN AN OPEN CAVITY AND THE 
REDUCTION IN DECOUPLING CAUSED BY OVERDRIVING.  
It is hidden by the trees.3      
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
3 ?Salmon and Sterling Nuclear Detonation Test Site, Tatum Salt Dome, Baxterville, Mississippi, Mens et 
Manus.Net, 2006 October.? Accessed at http://www.mensetmanus.net/salmon-sterling-site/ (last accessed 
Feb. 21, 2010). 
 
 232 
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