A lot of nuclear world firsts happened in New Mexico. The difficulty is that due to the nuclear and secretive nature of the events, they can be hard to visit. It is possible – here’s how.

First, there is all the activities that happened at Los Alamos – a military site that didn’t even exist at first. It has since become Los Alamos National Laboratories – a government research site that continued the early nuclear work. Believe it or not, some of the original buildings are still on the site, and you can even visit them.

Dubbed “Behind the Fence” tours, you can actually visit some of the original buildings in which the first bombs were assembled and tested. You have to be lucky though. You need to be one of the 30 people picked for one of the 6 annual tours.

Next up, there is Trinity site itself – where the first nuclear bomb was detonated. You can visit it twice a year when the site is opened up on the first Saturday in April and third Saturday in October.