Yucca Airstrip is a private-use

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

located 17 miles (27 km) north of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

of Mercury, in

Nye County Nye County is a county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 51,591. Its county seat is Tonopah. At , Nye is Nevada's largest county by area and the third-largest county in the contiguous United States, beh ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

, United States. The airport is located on the

Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Sites (N2S2 or NNSS), popularized as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a reservation of the United States Department of Energy located in the southeastern portion of Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of ...

and is owned by the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

. On the

sectional chart In United States aviation, a sectional aeronautical chart, often called a sectional chart or a sectional for short, is a type of aeronautical chart designed for air navigation under visual flight rules (VFR). In Australia, Canada and some other ...

it is depicted as an unverified airstrip.

History

The airport was the staging area for Shot Badger, a test of the Upshot–Knothole Series of nuclear test shots on April 18, 1953.

Facilities

Yucca Airstrip Airport covers an area of and has two

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

s, one located on the salt flat and a shorter, more recently constructed asphalt runway just east of the salt flat: * Runway 01/19: 4,990 x 75 ft (1,521 x 23 m), surface:

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

* Runway 14/32: 9,000 x 200 ft (2,743 x 61 m), surface:

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

The asphalt runway was constructed in 2002 as part of an

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

test facility.

References

*
Great Circle Mapper: UCC/KUCC - Mercury, Nevada (Yucca Airstrip)

External links

Airports in Nevada Buildings and structures in Nye County, Nevada Nevada Test Site Transportation in Nye County, Nevada Secret places in the United States {{Nevada-airport-stub