During this time , Albert Bacon Fall , first Senator of New Mexico and later Secretary of the Interior , owned the Three Rivers Ranch just south of Carrizozo but had to sell it to settle legal debts as a result of his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal ( 1922 – 1923 ) . During the same time , journalist Quentin Reynolds visited the town and wrote a piece on it for '' Collier 's Weekly '' . Later , he wrote in '' The Wounded Do n't Cry '' that " I used to agree with Bugs that once you left New York , you were strictly on the horse and buggy circuit . But of late years I ’ve had to modify that . Since then I ’ve discovered New Orleans , San Francisco and a little place called Carrizozo , New Mexico , where I want to go when I die . I want to go there and gang around the drug store and sneak behind the prescription counter with Art Rolland and have a nip of what he calls Old Granddaddy then type out his prescriptions for him . " Carrizozo is about 50 miles from Trinity Site , where the first nuclear bomb was detonated on July 16 , 1945 . Residents reported tremors like an earthquake and , as the first major downwind settlement , the town received a significant part of the remnants of the mushroom cloud ( resulting in some radioactive contamination of the area , which faded quickly and does not persist today )
Trinity Site
Trinity (nuclear test)
Carrizozo, New Mexico