Nevada’s ‘Peace Camp,’ The Last Site of Its Kind, Reveals History of Cold-War Protests

[bluedigger]

It was visited by scientists and celebrities, from Carl Sagan to Martin Sheen. It was the year-round home of less famous activists for decades. And it was nearly lost, until archaeologists helped document the unique history that it enshrined.

For more than 50 years, protesters occupied a makeshift campsite outside the gates of the former Nevada Test Site, now known as the Nevada National Security Site, to protest the U.S. government’s development and testing of nuclear weapons there.

Today, the Peace Camp, as it came to be known, is empty, but archaeologists recently surveyed the traces left by a half-century of civil disobedience, recording what experts say is the last remaining site of its kind.

“This archaeological research is unique, because the Peace Camp is the only known intact Cold War protest camp in the world,” said Dr. Colleen Beck, archaeologist with the Las Vegas-based Desert Research Institute. “Without this study of the Peace Camp, the entire camp area would have been destroyed, and no one outside the protest participants would have ever known about the rich heritage they created there.”

http://westerndigs.org/nevadas-peace-camp-the-last-site-of-its-kind-reveals-history-of-cold-war-protests/