Colonial New Mexico

During the late evening hours of 15 July 1945, Enrico Fermi wandered among his fellow scientists at the Trinity Test Site soliciting bets. He wondered. Would the test bomb ignite the atmosphere? And, if so, would it destroy just New Mexico or destroy the world? A deafening roar, a brilliant orange ball of fire and a thunderous shockwave at 5:29:45 a.m. the next morning answered his question. In that same instant, the military future of New Mexico departed dramatically from its martial past. Very quickly, a territory and state that was often an outpost of empire and a battleground for Native Americans and Europeans, was becoming inextricably linked to a new ideological and imperial struggle being waged on a global scale.