We dug through trash from World War II in the Idaho desert. Here’s what we found
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EDITOR’S NOTE: EastIdahoNews.com is working with Idaho National Laboratory to celebrate its 75th anniversary. Each month, we’ll highlight the history, achievements and trials of the U.S. Department of Energy’s desert site. We’ll explore the INL’s influence on eastern Idaho, and its impact on local people.
ARCO — Far out in the eastern Idaho desert, we explored a canal just feet off the road, filled with thousands of rusted medicine bottles, hand-painted mugs, fine china, original glass soda bottles, children’s toys and even a bird cage.
We walked past beer bottles, antique light fixtures, tin cans, rusted-over handheld mirrors and washboards that have been resting here for over 80 years.
Men, women and children lived here during World War II and the momentous events that marked the conflict, such as the Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bombs in Japan.
Today, we can learn a little about their lives because this pile of trash has remained virtually untouched for all those years.
But why is a World War II trash heap in the middle of the Idaho desert? And what does a mile-long pile of trash have to do with the history of nuclear power in Idaho?
For that, let’s go back in time.
It’s the early 1940s, and tensions are quickly building toward World War II. The U.S. Navy is anxious to build support facilities to train sailors, build and test weapons, and be war-ready.
According to Susan M. Stacy’s book “Proving the Principle”, which details the history of the INL, the Navy needed an inland area with lots of space and flat enough land to transport large weapons.
“The Pacific Fleet needed a location fairly close to the West Coast where they could have their gun barrels realigned and basically refurbished because they could only last so many rounds of ammunition being fired through them,” says Jon Grams, a project researcher for the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) at Idaho National Laboratory. “So in Pocatello, they built what they called the Pocatello Naval Ordnance Plant.”
The Naval Ordnance Plant opened in Pocatello on April 1, 1942. The area was already home to the largest Union Pacific Railroad terminals in the U.S. and was on a transcontinental highway.
“The guns came from such fighting ships as USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin, whose revolving armored turrets, studded with 16-inch guns, the Navy’s most powerful, helped win the Pacific war,” says Stacy. “Repeated firing of the guns eroded the bore, wore out the rifling, and compromised the accuracy of the gun.”
To fix them, the Pocatello plant removed the worn-out inner sleeves of the gun barrels and relined them with fresh metal.
Eventually, the Navy realized it needed somewhere to ship these weapons to for testing – again, somewhere large and flat. This is what they found in Arco, 65 miles from the Pocatello Naval Ordnance Plant.
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The Arco Naval Proving Grounds
“They had this huge 900-square-mile open area here between mountain ranges on the east and west,” says Grams. “And this is where they decided to set up a naval facility for test firing these guns.”
The 9-mile-wide, 36-mile-long Arco Naval Proving Ground was established in 1942. It was there Navy families lived, worked and thrived, just a few hundred feet away from where weapons were being tested during World War II.
With families living on the proving grounds, the Navy divided the area into residential and proof areas.
The residential area housed families. Marines organized baseball teams, and women engaged in sewing circles. Adults made sure to entertain the community with twice-weekly movie nights.
“On the other side of the railroad tracks, there used to be a locomotive shed,” says Libby Cook, an architectural historian at Idaho National Laboratory. “They would pull the locomotive out, drop down a screen, put benches in, and folks could watch brand-new movies.”
Eventually, the town was given its own name – “Scoville,” after Cmdr. John A. Scoville, the officer in charge of construction of the Pocatello plant and the proving ground.
“The Navy built for permanence, planting the grounds with trees and shrubs. The northernmost dwelling, the one with a matching garage, was reserved for the commanding officer,” says Stacy. “Beyond the barracks were a kennel for the Marines’ patrol dogs and a well-supplied commissary, which the civilians called ‘the store.’”
The children in town were as normal as could be, going to school, playing by the water tower, and even getting scolded by the Marines when they acted out.
“Students filled up a gun-metal-gray bus and went to school at Arco 17 miles away, sometimes accompanied by a Marine when certain boys got out of hand,” says Stacy. “In typical military fashion, the bus stopped one day each year in front of the Marine barracks, where no child could escape the dreaded ‘tick shot,’ a booster to prevent Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”
Overall, life was normal, with a plethora of families living in close quarters.
“There’s a great photo of a woman named Pat Gibson with her horse. They had livestock and animals out here,” says Cook. “We have another family who kept a small dairy herd just north of the Naval Proving Ground, and they would provide milk to the families in town.”
The homesteaders thrived in a small, tight-knit naval community, but one main struggle often arrived in November, when dangerous winter weather appears in Idaho.
“We have a couple of stories of them having to drop food in when the roads closed because Highway 20 was not a thing before 1949,” says Cook. “There’s also a story about a lady who was expecting a baby out here, and they were very grateful that the roads cleared before she needed to welcome her small child into the world.”
Another concern was the war weapons being tested just feet from the locals.
The concussion wall
To protect civilians from the blasts, the Navy built a concussion wall in 1943 to separate the residential area from the proof area.
“The guns weigh about 120 tons and are approximately 70 feet long. It’s a pretty big piece of equipment,” says Grams. “The concussion was built to protect the barracks and the people who worked here from the daily concussions that would happen from firing those 16-inch guns.”
The concussion wall still stands, 315 feet long, 8 feet thick, and 15 and a half feet high. According to Stacy, the workers in the control tower would look out of small window slits, each painted with a letter to make up the words “SAFETY FIRST.”
The end of WWII – and big changes for the Naval Proving Ground
When World War II ended in September 1945, the proving ground became nonessential, lacking a reason to continue testing war weaponry if the war was over.
Instead, the proving ground tested ammunition to determine how much could be stored in one area before it would spontaneously combust.
“They’re doing a lot of research and testing out here — just not necessarily for a war effort,” says Cook.
After the war, the United States had a new problem – the world knew about its nuclear technology. Now, they needed a place to test it and prove to the world it could be used safely.
“The U.S. really wants to prove that (nuclear technology) can be put to peaceful uses,” says Cook. “So the Atomic Energy Commission is formed to take control of nuclear technology out of the military’s hands, put it in civilian hands and find a way to use it to improve the world.”
So, the government started looking for a place to test the technology — somewhere relatively flat and far from dense population centers.
“Nuclear research would bring with it nuclear waste and chemical processing, neither of which were suitable byproducts for heavily populated areas,” says Stacy. “Most importantly, if an accident were to occur, it should not endanger large numbers of people.”
Soon enough, like the Navy in the early ’40s, the government discovered Arco.
“It conveniently already had houses, offices, buildings, water supplies in place and a railroad,” says Cook. “So the Arco Naval Proving Ground ends up getting taken out of the Navy’s hands and given over to the Atomic Energy Commission to become the National Reactor Testing Station.”
Looking through their trash
After the American victory over Japan, the homesteaders in Scoville moved around the country, many of them to nearby towns like Idaho Falls and Pocatello.
INL communications specialist Paul Menser found two sisters, Dee Stevenson and Judy Hamilton, who lived and left the Naval Proving Grounds, saying they remember the exact day World War II ended.
“When World War II ended, my dad lifted me up, and I got to ring the siren over and over,” said Dee in Menser’s article. “Born in March 1945, Judy was still an infant, so her memories come from a few years later and include marching behind Marines as they drilled. (‘They never seemed to mind,’ she says.)”
But what was left behind was a nearly mile-long canal full of war-time garbage.
Reese Cook, an archeologist with INL, says the dubbed “World War II trash heap” is a reminder of how far we’ve come.
“Everything they were eating, everything they were using, everything that they discarded ended up in this landfill,” says Cook. “It tells us a lot about their life and in a snapshot out here through their trash.”
From the trash, researchers have learned more about the population, including how they used to spend their time.
“We knew that we had families out here and we knew that we have obviously a military component as well, but to what extent we didn’t really realize,” says Cook. “From this trash we can tell roughly how many people could have lived in this area, and by the amount of trash they’ve amassed.”
The variety of items shows how lively the town once was, with baby necessities, beer bottles, beauty items and cooking supplies.
“We have a range of artifacts from just regular sanitary cans, to sippy cups, or trains like little tiny toy trains and things like that,” says Cook. “There’s cologne bottles and beer cans, all kinds of stuff, just life out here. We can learn a lot from from the trash.”
Not just anyone can visit the trash heap, as INL safeguards the area. Because of that, the trash heap has not been impacted by developments, highways or anything that would cause it to be disturbed. It stands still in time.
“This is being preserved because it hasn’t been affected yet by any encroachment of highways or facilities,” says Cook. “We still can actually learn from all the trash that we’re throwing away in our modern life. People can learn from that as well in the future. So it’s kind of like a time capsule.”
Cook says the history behind the people who lived and worked at the proving grounds serves an essential purpose.
“This trash heap is just one of hundreds of archeological sites and cultural resources we have here at INL,” says Cook. “This is part of our history.”
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