Groom Lake is a dry lake, also described as a salt flat, in

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

. It is used for runways of the Nellis Bombing Range Test Site airport (KXTA). Part of the

Area 51 Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Base, the facility is officially called Homey Airport ...

USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

installation, it lies at an elevation of and is approximately from north to south and from east to west at its widest point, and is approximately 11.3 miles in circumference. Located within the namesake Groom Lake Valley portion of the

Tonopah Basin The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin ...

, the lake is south of

Rachel, Nevada Rachel is a census-designated place (CDP) in Lincoln County, Nevada, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 48. As the closest settlement to the Nellis Air Force Range and Area 51, Rachel enjoys a modest celebrity status, pa ...

.DREAMLAND: Fifty Years of Secret Flight Testing in Nevada
By Peter W. Merlin The nearest publicly accessible vantage point is

Tikaboo Peak Tikaboo Peak is the unofficial name for a mountain in Lincoln County, Nevada, United States to the east of Area 51 Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Tr ...

, 26 miles to the east. There were two closer vantage points, dubbed "Freedom Ridge" and "White Sides", but they were closed to public access in 1995 to prevent people from taking pictures of the installation.

History

Lead and silver were discovered in the southern part of the Groom Range in 1864,Mineral resources of the Pahranagat Range 30' by 60' quadrangle
, Joseph V. Tingley, Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology,

University of Nevada, Reno The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada, the University of Nevada, or UNR) is a public land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada. It is the state's flagship public university and primary land grant institution. It was founded on October 12, ...

, 1989, retrieved June 11, 2010 and the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Groome Lead Mines Limited company financed the Conception Mines in the 1870s, giving the district its name (nearby mines included Maria, Willow and White Lake). The mining claims in Groom were acquired by J. B. Osborne and partners and patented in 1876, and Osborne's son acquired the interests in the 1890s. The claims were proved in 1916 when two companies began working their mines; that work continued until 1918, and resuming after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

until the early 1950s.

In popular culture

In the '' Call of Duty: Black Ops'' franchise's Zombies mode, Groom Lake appears repeatedly as a test site for the American government's experiments with lunar teleportation.

References

Lakes of Nevada Lakes of Lincoln County, Nevada Mining in Nevada Salt flats of the United States {{LincolnCountyNV-geo-stub