Tularosa Basin Downwinders 10th Annual Candlelight Vigil

Andrea Toogood, left, and her mother Irene Kowatch, right, set up luminarias for Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium Candlelight Vigil, Saturday, July 20.

Gen. George S. Patton points his riding crop during the military campaign in Sicily in 1943. Behind him to the left is his chief of staff, Gen. Hap Gay. Patton was using one of the three sites selected for the testing of the atomic bomb to train his men for a showdown in North Africa. The site was ruled out because Gen. Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, refused to talk to Patton.

Jumbo - The 25-foot-long, 10-foot-wide concrete encasement, which was nicknamed "Jumbo" was never used in the testing of the atomic bomb. Yet, one story associated with the naming of the Trinity site has an Army major saying it would take the holy trinity and a miracle to get the "jug" from the Santa Fe Railway to the test site.

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of Los Alamos Laboratory and the "father of the bomb," while Major Gen. Leslie Groves served as the military leader of the Manhattan Project - the code name for the American-led effort to develop an atomic bomb.

In this historic photo, military personnel are seen moving "Jumbo" to Trinity Site. One of the concerns of the scientists who built the "Gadget" nuclear device that was detonated at Trinity Site in 1945, was that the bomb might not actually go off.

The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, at Trinity Site, on the north end of what is now White Sands Missile Range. This photograph is the only existing color shot of the Trinity Test and was taken by an amateur, Jack Aeby, with his own camera. The New Mexico Museum of Space History is hosting a motor coach tour to the site April 1.

Kathy Tyler and Don Powell, Tularosa Basin Downwinders, hold signs to inform caravaners as they make their way out to the Trinity Test Site on Saturday morning. The Tularosa Basin Downwinders believe the Trinity test changed the gene pools of residents in surrounding communities, leaving a cluster of cancer and illness in the descendants of those who witnessed the atomic bomb.

This July 16, 1945, sequence of file photos shows a mushroom cloud as it is recorded by a U.S. Army automatic motion picture camera six miles away as the first atomic bomb test was conducted north of Alamogordo. A new PBS special looks into the creation of the atomic bomb in the city of Los Alamos and will feature newly-restored footage of nuclear weaponry. "The Bomb," which begins airing Tuesday, July 28, 2015, on most PBS stations, seeks to tell the story of the deadly device as the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches.

In this July 1945, photo, scientists and workmen rig the world's first atomic bomb to raise it up into a 100-foot tower at the Trinity bomb test site in the desert near Alamogordo.

One of the signs at Tularosa Little League field at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium 10th annual Candlelight Vigil on July 20.

One of the signs at Tularosa Little League field at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium July 20.

Larry Van Winkle of CAPPED bangs a drum during the reading of names at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders 10th annual Candlelight Vigil July 20.

The Trinity site following the explosion on July 16, 1945.

The blast from the first atomic bomb tested at Trinity Site near Alamogordo. The blast took place on July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time, just before sunrise on a rain-soaked morning. The test changed the world forever, and culminated three years of planning, development and secrecy.

One of the signs at Tularosa Little League field at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium 10th annual Candlelight Vigil on July 20.

Luminarias commemorating those lost due to health issues following the Trinity site detonations on July 16, 1945. There were about 700-800 luminarias at the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium 10th annual Candlelight Vigil July 20.

The world's first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, at Trinity Site, on the north end of what is now White Sands Missile Range.

A tower erected at the site to hold "the gadget," as it was known, was built on a portion of the then-Alamogordo Army Air Field. The site was located in area of the desert known by locals and early Spanish settlers as the "Jornada del Muerto" or "journey of the dead man." The site was chosen after a review of eight different locations.