The site where the first atomic bomb was detonated is now a unique tourist destination. The Trinity Site, located at the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico, was open to the public Saturday as part of an open house. White Sands Missile Range provides access to the first nuclear test site biannually; the next open house is scheduled for October.

Saturday's open house attracted a record 5,534 visitors, the New York Times reported. Tourists can explore the place where the first bomb was detonated, bunkers at the site, and take a shuttle to the Schmidt-McDonald ranch house where scientists assembled the bomb's plutonium core. The Manhattan Project, formed in June 1942 and headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, developed and built the first atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project used three facilities in the bomb's development -- Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was used to separate uranium; Hanford, Washington, produced plutonium; and Los Alamos in New Mexico was established to build and test the bomb. Trinity Site was chosen to test a plutonium bomb due to its proximity to Los Alamos and its seclusion, according to WSMR. The test was successfully performed on July 16, 1945.

Witnesses noted the incredible brightness and heat generate from the test. "It turned yellow, then red and then beautiful purple," Ralph Carlisle Smith, a lawyer at Los Alamos, wrote of the explosion in his eyewitness report. "At first it had a translucent character, but shortly turned to a tinted or colored white smoke appearance. The ball of fire seemed to rise in something of toadstool effect. Later the column proceeded as a cylinder of white smoke; it seemed to move ponderously. A hole was punched through the clouds but two fog rings appeared well above the white smoke column. There was a spontaneous cheer from the observers." The Trinity Site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

Today, radiation at the site is low and exposure is not considered a safety hazard. Trinity Site is the only location where Trinitite -- a green glasslike substance created from the first atomic bomb test -- can be found, but collecting samples is forbidden.

"Trinity Site is a national historic testing landmark where the theories and engineering of some of the nation's brightest minds were tested with the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, technologies which then helped end World War II,” WSMR Commander Brig. Gen. Timothy Coffin said in a statement.