Historic Ranch House Open Twice a Year at Trinity Site

Seventy years ago, the McDonald-Schmidt Ranch House at the White Sands Missile Range (adjacent to the White Sands National Monument) in Socorro County, New Mexico, was where scientists assembled the first atomic bomb on July 13, 1945. Three days later a “Fat-Man” type bomb, similar to the one that would be dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. The McDonald-Schmidt house had been neglected for decades until it was restored in 1984 to its appearance in 1945. German immigrant Franz Sch