Mercury

Mercury is a closed village in Nye County, Nevada, United States, 5 miles north of U.S. Route 95 at a point 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It is situated within the Nevada National Security Site and was constructed by the Atomic Energy Commission to house and service the staff of the test site. The specific site was known as Jackass Flats and nearby Nevada Test Site 400. Today, the site is governed by the United States Department of Energy. As part of the test site, the village is not accessible to the general public. It was named after the mercury mines which flourished in its general vicinity a century before the village itself was established. The current population is unknown.

The village started in 1950 at the beginning of operations of the Nevada Test Site as Base Camp Mercury, a military-style encampment built to provide basic facilities for personnel involved. As the scope of the testing program expanded, so did the number of personnel required to fulfill the site's mission, and beginning in 1951 a $6.7 million construction project was undertaken to provide adequate individual housing, office, and service structures with a civilian village-like design. With the acquisition of a full-service post office in the mid-1950s, Base Camp Mercury was formally renamed Mercury, Nevada.

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