Henderson: The Town That Made the Bomb

Henderson did not exist before World War Two. In nineteen forty-one, the federal government spent millions of dollars in the Nevada desert south of Las Vegas to build the Basic Magnesium plant, a facility designed to produce lightweight metal for aircraft and ammunition. Workers poured in from across the country. An instant city of thousands of people took shape around the plant in under a year. The government named it Henderson, after Charles Henderson, a Nevada senator who had supported the project.

After the war, the magnesium plant converted to civilian chemical production. The workers stayed. Henderson incorporated as a city in nineteen fifty-three and has never stopped growing. Today it is the second-largest city in Nevada. The chemical industry that started with wartime magnesium still operates in the city today. Henderson arrived overnight as a tool of war and stayed as a suburb.