At least 74 tests of "radiological arms" were conducted at Dugway in the 1940s and 1950s. Radioactive materials would be burst and scattered in a way designed to contaminate enemy battlefields. Most the materials used had short half-lives and would have ceased to have been dangerous years ago.

Also in 1959, the Air Force secretly conducted what amounted to eight intentional nuclear reactor meltdowns at Dugway. It melted reactor fuel in high-temperature furnaces and used forced air to ensure the resulting radiation would be spread to the wind. Researchers wanted to see how far radiation from then-planned nuclear-powered airplanes might spread if meltdowns occurred.

When radiation clouds left detector range, they were headed toward the old U.S. 40 (now I-80). The communities of Wendover and Knolls might also have been in the path of those clouds, according to documents obtained and reported on by the Deseret News in 1994.

Those tests release a total of 215.57 curies of radiation, or about 14 times more than that released at the infamous Three Mile Island near-meltdown.

Also between 1959 and 1965, the Atomic Energy Commission experimented with atomic-powered rockets in Nevada, which may have spread radiation downwind to Utah.

Chemical tests

Radiation wasn't the only problem. Utah was also host to 1,174 series of open-air tests or firing of munitions filled with chemical arms at Dugway Proving Ground.

Army documents obtained by the Deseret News through the years show that at least 494,700 pounds of nerve agent were spread to the winds. A pinhead-sized drop of nerve agent VX can cause death.

The strongest case that some of it drifted off base came on March 13, 1968 — after a jet streaked around the Dugway base, dropping 2,730 pounds of VX on test grids. Documents said more than half of it may have traveled farther than the mile downwind that monitors tracked it.

The next day, 6,000 sheep began dying 25 miles from the base in Skull Valley. The Army paid $1 million in restitution to ranchers but never acknowledged the VX killed those sheep.

Ray Peck, who now lives in West Valley City, was living in Skull Valley the night the VX was spread and worked outside much of that evening. He went inside when he developed an earache. The next morning, he said new-fallen snow was so pretty that he ate a handful of it. Then he saw the dead birds nearby and a dying rabbit struggling in the distance.

Soon the sheep began dying. An Army helicopter would soon land on his yard, disgorging officials who collected dead wildlife and performed blood tests on his frightened family.