Mercury, Gateway to Area 51
Mile 2,517, Mercury, NV
A sign gets in our way in a flagrant attempt to block our view of top secret Mercury, a town within the Nevada Test Site that is closed to the public and, in its 1950s heyday of nuclear testing, was said to be home to 10,000 residents; hopefully they didn’t cause a Geiger counter to spike. Past Mercury, the road is said to carry northward to the infamous Area 51, a place many conspiracy theorists believe houses remains of UFOs and/or aliens. The state of Nevada pokes a little fun at all of this, nicknaming a state road on the other site of the area the Extraterrestrial Highway.