The Atomic Museum, formally the National Atomic Testing Museum and a Smithsonian Affiliate, tells the story of the Nevada Test Site: the 1,360-square-mile stretch of desert 65 miles northwest of here where the United States detonated more than 900 nuclear devices between 1951 and 1992.
Above-ground testing was visible from downtown Las Vegas, and the city marketed it. Hotels held dawn viewing parties, casinos sold Atomic Cocktails, and mushroom clouds turned up on tourist brochures. The museum covers that alongside the science and the Cold War politics, with a Ground Zero Theater that simulates an atmospheric test inside a replica observation bunker, a section of the Berlin Wall, and equipment, film and oral histories from the people who worked at the site.
It sits on East Flamingo, about two miles off the Strip, and takes roughly ninety minutes. It is a real museum rather than an attraction dressed as one, and it is the clearest account anywhere of a chapter of local history the Strip has otherwise erased.