On July 16, 1945, the world changed forever. At 5:29am the “The Gadget” was detonated at the Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico. The Gadget’s explosion was equivalent to twenty-two kilotons of TNT. A crater of 4.7 feet deep and eighty-eight yards wide was created from the blast.

The desert was sucked up into the heart of the explosion, where high temperatures liquefied it. It then rained down, cooled, and turned solid creating a mildly radioactive light green glass called trinitite. Named after Trinity - the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device.

In 1951 Dr. Ralph Pray collected four truckloads of trinitite from the Trinity test site. In his estimation the total was between 500-600 lbs. per load. What I sell comes from this collection.

Not long after (early 1950s), Dr. Pray was the sole supplier of trinitite to a store named Los Compadres in Ojo Caliente, NM which sold the trinitite as souvenirs. Los Compadres was closed by the early 70s.

Some, if not all, of the remaining collection was then obtained by Millstone Antique Shop in Coloma, MI. Millstone would sell trinitite at shows and through mail order.

In the mid to late 1990s A private collector named Derik Bower in Hagerstown, MD obtained the trinitite from a family member of Millstone Antique Shop. (Samples from his collection, now mine, were used in the study "Radioactivity in Trinitite - a review and new measurements")   

Years later a government scientist in Washington, DC. purchased a portion of Dr. Pray’s collection from Derik Bower.

Atomic Rock Shop obtained a sizeable amount from the government scientist in 2015 which I now sell on this site.

AUTHENTICITY
In the right column is a gamma spectroscopy test of a random specimen from this collection. You will see that it shows the unique gamma footprint of trinitite (specifically from the first atomic blast on July 16, 1945). Thanks to Andrey Stoev for running the test. See his "My Science and Engineering Blog" at blog.kotarak.net.

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Gamma Spectroscopy by Andrey Stoev @ blog.kotarak.net

Packaged by Los Compadres and but sold by Millstone Antique Shop - NFS