Area 51 — Founding and Early History (1954–1957)

Area 51 — Founding and Early History (1954–1957)

The Strategic Context

The founding of Area 51 in 1955 was a direct response to one of the most pressing intelligence problems of the early Cold War: the United States government had almost no reliable intelligence about Soviet military capabilities — their bomber forces, their missile programs, their nuclear arsenal — and the Soviets' vast territory and aggressive air defense made conventional reconnaissance impossible.

The Soviet Union had demonstrated in 1949 that it possessed nuclear weapons. By 1953, the hydrogen bomb had been tested by both superpowers. American military planners were operating in an information vacuum regarding the precise nature of Soviet nuclear and conventional capabilities. The need for reliable photographic intelligence of the Soviet heartland was urgent.

The U-2 Program and Site Selection

The solution was a radical concept: an aircraft that could fly so high — above 70,000 feet — that no Soviet fighter or surface-to-air missile could reach it. Developed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works under the classified designation Project AQUATONE, the U-2 required a testing location:

• Remote enough to prevent Soviet satellite and agent observation
• Flat enough to provide a natural landing surface
• Large enough to operate with full security
• Close enough to Lockheed's Burbank, California facilities for personnel commuting

CIA officer Richard Bissell and Air Force officers conducting the site survey selected Groom Lake in April 1955 after aerial photography identified the dry lake bed as ideal. President Eisenhower approved the site selection.

Construction and Establishment

Date	Event
April 1955	Site selected by CIA and Air Force; presidential approval obtained
Spring 1955	Construction begins; runway, hangars, and basic facilities built
July 1955	CIA, Air Force, and Lockheed personnel begin arriving
July 24, 1955	First U-2 delivery arrives from Burbank via C-124 Globemaster II
August 1, 1955	First unofficial U-2 flight (accidental — aircraft became airborne during high-speed taxi test)
August 4, 1955	First intentional U-2 flight at Groom Lake by test pilot Tony LeVier
1956	U-2 operational testing complete; operational overflights of Soviet Union begin

Naming: "Paradise Ranch" and "Area 51"

The installation was given several designations during its early period:

• The Ranch — informal name used by personnel commuting from California
• Paradise Ranch*** — the official cover name used to make the facility sound attractive to prospective employees who were told they'd be working at a remote desert site; quickly shortened to "The Ranch"
• Watertown Strip — another operational designation
• Area 51*** — derived from the Atomic Energy Commission's map grid system for the Nevada Test Site region; the number 51 identified the grid square in which Groom Lake was located; the AEC grid designations were classified, which initially prevented the name from spreading publicly

The AEC designation "Area 51" eventually became the most widely used identifier — first in classified government documents, then in UFO researcher literature of the 1970s and 1980s, and finally in global popular culture.

UFO Sightings Generated from the Start

Almost immediately upon the beginning of U-2 test flights in August 1955, the aircraft began generating UFO reports from civilian and commercial aviation observers. The U-2 flew at altitudes far above any known aircraft of the era — often above 60,000 feet — and its highly reflective silver surface would catch sunlight at angles invisible to observers below, creating brilliant flashes and streaks against the sky that bore no resemblance to known aircraft. By some CIA estimates, more than half of all UFO sightings reported in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the American Southwest were attributable to U-2 and later OXCART flights. This finding is documented in the declassified 2013 CIA history.