Hamilton was drawn to this land because the view is breathtaking: aspen groves and oak scrub nestled between steep rocky sandstone cliffs. Wild turkey and elk wander the property, often headed to get water from nearby Battlement Creek.

Hamilton purchased the Rulison blast site with her eyes wide open. Her front door is less than 90 yards from the marker.

“The realtor advised us of what went on. They said, ‘I know you love the home and the view. But you need to do your research,’” Hamilton said.

The most recent water samples analyzed by the Department of Energy show no radioactivity. The government says radioactivity has never been detected in soil samples near Project Rulison, before or after detonation.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Claude Hayward, the original private owner of the land used for the Rulison shot. Ownership transferred to Hayward's son, then a family friend and now the land is owned by the Hamilton family, who live on it today.

“Coming from the Denver area of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, they have homes built on that,” Hamilton mused. “Now they’re finding, years later, radioactivity in certain places. It couldn’t be any worse living down there than it is living up here.”

But why even split the atom under this beloved land?

“This was 1969, there was a depression in the area,” Judith Hayward said. Her husband Lee, now deceased, told her that his father, Claude Hayward, was promised a monthly check by Austral Oil once the post-blast gas started to flow.

The money never came.

“For years they have been telling us the oil shale around here would bring people back… but it hasn’t happened,” Claude told the Houston Chronicle in September 1969. “We’ve had hard times. The young people move away to the cities and the old ones wait, hoping something will happen to save our town.”

The Bomb Didn’t Bring The Boom

Economic development remains a challenge in Parachute. The population has hovered above 1,000 for more than a decade. The oil and gas industry isn’t as visible here as the town’s five marijuana dispensaries.

“People get very uptight and upset about fracking. [Project Rulison] was big fracking,” said Judy Beasley, who along with her husband served 32 years in various city offices in the town of Parachute, including mayor.

Since 1969, the town has had its shares of booms and busts. The most notable came in 1982 when ExxonMobil pulled up stakes in the region on a $5 billion shale oil project. More than 2,000 jobs evaporated in the Black Sunday bust and people and businesses fled the valley.

Between 1970 and 1971, Austral Oil used a reentry well to test and burn off some natural gas. Samples were found to be tainted with a small amount of radioactivity. Once that was detected, flaring was shut down. The company struck out when the market turned its back on the Rulison well, but a larger field of natural gas remains underground and conventional development has moved in to tap it.

Cross-section of the Rulison blast crater published in November 2018 by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management.

Data from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission shows a few producing wells nearby. Coreen Hamilton sees the truck traffic on high mountain roads as they visit the sites to the south of her home.

In addition to annual 47 years of water sampling around the site, Project Rulison site manager Jalena Dayvault with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management said some natural gas wells are also sampled within a 1-mile radius of the epicenter.

“The frequency of the sampling is based on the production of the well itself,” Dayvault said. “So we might be out there sampling on a monthly basis to begin with, and then reduce it quarterly. It all depends on how much gas that well is producing.”

State officials have their own testing regimen for nearby oil and gas operators. Wells proposed within a half-mile of ground zero must have a special meeting with the COGCC to weigh the project. Outside of the half-mile zone, there are soil sampling requirements. Some rules were relaxed in 2017 after decades of tests had shown negative results.

Even still, living near the site of an underground nuclear test makes some uneasy.

“They should have a permanent monitoring station set up out there,” said Ben Tipton, who along with his wife Sharon have fought modern-day energy exploration near their Battlement Mesa retirement community.

Ursa Resources has completed the first phase of its project in Battlement Mesa. It has proposed additional stages of a much longer regional project but has yet to start them.

“The federal government are the ones that set this off,” Tipton said. “They shouldn’t be holding off one bit.”

In fact, the Department of Energy plans to do the opposite and will move to “greatly reduce” the frequency of water sampling near Rulison in 2020.

“We may still collect a couple of samples that homeowners or somebody may want us to collect,” Dayvault said.

Jim Hill/CPR News Coreen Hamilton, left, lives on site at Project Rulison and Judith Hayward, who used to live here with her husband Lee Hayward, Aug. 28, 2019.

Judith Hayward shares the oil and gas concerns expressed by some of her neighbors. She voiced them back in the early 2000s when the Grand Valley Citizens’ Alliance challenged state regulators all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court over a proposed oil and gas development near Project Rulison. And still she shares them today.

“I don’t believe there’s any radiation,” said Hayward, who spent the better part of two decades on the project land with her husband Lee. But even still, she doesn’t have any intention of leasing the mineral rights she owns along with other family members under Surface Ground Zero for development.

“This needs to just be set aside because of what they did down here,” she said.

For its part, the federal government has its own restrictions. In the 40 acres around the blast, companies are prohibited from drilling deeper than 6,000 feet. The bomb cavity sits at the bottom of an 8,425-foot shaft. This information is even engraved on the memorial marker installed in 1976.

Coreen Hamilton’s concerns are more immediate and less atomic.

“Beer bottles, beer cans, snacky wrappers… people, they don’t care,” she said of the visitors who sneak onto her land to take pictures of the small Project Rulison marker. It’s impossible to read it without trespassing.

She’s spoken with the Department of Energy about an interpretive sign that tells Project Rulison’s story — one that can be read from the road.

Jim Hill/CPR News The Department of Energy monument to Project Rulison sits behind a fence on private land. It's nearly impossible to read without trespassing.

Until then, she can expect more visitors. Some even come to her house to talk about the monument. One day brought the great-grandson of a Rulison scientist who wanted to see where his relative had worked 50 years ago.

“When they start talking I try not to interrupt,” Hamilton said. “I just try to sit back and listen.”

History is all that remains. The Plowshares Program faded away, its fate sealed by the lack of commercial success, public consciousness about radioactivity and the will of state voters. After the subsequent Project Rio Blanco experiment faced similar scrutiny, Coloradans approved a constitutional amendment in 1974 that requires voter approval before any nuclear device is detonated in the state. That leaves the Centennial State as a unique place where the people hold the power to grant permission for both new taxes and nuclear bombs.