Several couples who lived within five miles of Hayward’s land ignored the evacuation and rode out the detonation. A few pickle jars fell to the ground in her pantry. Some chimneys lost bricks, including Beasley’s. In the end the blast caused few problems for the locals.

“We were really fortunate that we didn’t have that much damage.” Jim Hill/CPR News Judy Beasley, who has a long history in Parachute, Colo., shares some of her stories in her home, Aug. Roadblocks were set up and a throng of reporters, G-men, scientists, congressmen and foreign observers descended on this sleepy section of what is now the I-70 corridor to bear witness. detonation time for fear the shot would damage buildings and cause injuries. Everyone was told to be outside at the 3 p.m. While a few dozen activists protested, most locals like Beasley had the afternoon of the blast off work. Go back 50 years and the scene in Parachute (in 1969 it was referred to as Grand Valley) felt almost festive. It was quite a show, really,” Hayward said. Hayward’s family owned the land where the experiment took place. Miles closer to the blast zone it “was like a train rushing up the canyon,” Lee Hayward told Look Magazine in 1970. “It felt like a very slow-moving tremble,” Parachute resident Judy Beasley said. The nuclear age wanted to give the oil and gas age a hand up. The device, more than twice as powerful as the weapon at Hiroshima and with muscle equivalent to 40,000 tons of TNT, was an unorthodox tool in a grand experiment to free natural gas and kickstart a boom. 10, 1969, six and a half miles south of Rulison, Colorado, a 40-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in the subterranean depths of the Piceance Basin.

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