The explosion was seen nearly 200 miles away, the shock waves felt practically 100 miles away, and 70 years later, America’s first atomic bomb test – codenamed Trinity – still reverberates in the tiny towns and secluded hamlets that ring the edges of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Richard Lopez’s farm sits in a verdant valley at the feet of the Magdalena Mountains and 17 miles from ground zero. He believes radiation from the nuclear test permeated the area, contributing to the lymphoma he fought and won.
“We raised a lot of vegetables, we do a lot of that,” he said. “But once I got the cancer, I quit the vegetable part.”
His illness shattered his life. “I had co-pays that were sometimes $1,400 a day,” said Lopez. “Anything extra that the farm didn’t need, we sold. We sold our trucks, we sold some equipment, we sold extra cows we didn’t want to sell.”
And he’s not the only one.