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It was my intention to have remained there all night, but it proved a ruffian sort of place, with meagre chances of comfort, and I moved on to Socorro. This is the last inhabited spot in New Mexico, as you approach the terrible desert, the Jornada del Muerte. Gode had never made the journey, and at Parida I had obtained one thing that we stood in need of, a guide.
I will not detail the events that occurred to us in the passage of that terrible jornada. They were similar to those we experienced in the deserts to the west. We suffered from thirst, making one stretch of sixty miles without water. We passed over sage-covered plains, without a living object to break the death-like monotony that extended around us.
The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, about 230 miles south of the Manhattan Project's headquarters at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today this 3,200 square mile range, partly located in the desolate Jornada del Muerto Valley, is named the White Sands Missile Range and is actively used for non-nuclear weapons testing.
I began to fear they would frighten my guide from his engagement, but the fellow stood out staunchly, still expressing his willingness to accompany us. Without the prospect of meeting the Apache savages, I was but ill prepared for the Jornada. The pain of my wound had increased, and I was fatigued and burning with fever.
The Jornada was a short cut on the Camino Real, the King's Highway that linked old Mexico to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. The Camino Real went north from Mexico City till it joined the Rio Grande near present day El Paso, Texas.
The pen can but feebly portray the grand and sublime effect produced upon the mind of him who gazes down into the deep valleys, or glances upward to the mighty mountains of Mexico. Though feeble be the effort, I shall attempt a series of sketches from memory. They are the panoramic views that present themselves during a single "Jornada." I stand upon the shores of the Mexican Gulf.
First choice was the military training area in southern California. The second choice, was the Jornada del Muerto Valley in New Mexico. The final site selection was made in late August 1944 by Major General Leslie R. Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project.
The drift lay in deep furrows, and our horses sank above the fetlocks as we journeyed. We were crossing the western section of the Jornada. We travelled in Indian file. Habit has formed this disposition among Indians and hunters on the march. The tangled paths of the forest, and the narrow defiles of the mountains admit of no other.
"Los Apaches! los Apaches!" I appealed to the peons and loiterers of the plaza. "Los Apaches!" Wherever I went, I was answered with "Los Apaches," and a shake of the forefinger in front of the nose a negative sign over all Mexico. "It is plain, Gode, we can get no guide. We must try this Jornada without one. What say you, voyageur?" "I am agree, mon maitre; allons!"
When General Groves discovered that in order to use the California location he would need the permission of its commander, General George Patton, Groves quickly decided on the second choice, the Jornada del Muerto. This was because General Groves did not want anything to do with the flamboyant Patton, who Groves had once described as "the most disagreeable man I had ever met."
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