Area 51 Nellis Bombing Range Test Site airport (KXTA) on the north of the Area 51 USAF military installation. The lake at elevation is approximately from north to south and from east to west at its widest point. Located within the namesake Groom Lake Valley portion of the Tonopah Basin, the lake is south of Rachel, Nevada. The origin of the Area 51 name is unclear. The most accepted comes from a grid numbering system of the area by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); while Area 51 is not part of this system, it is adjacent to Area 15. Another explanation is
Area 51 redactor appears to have missed one mention: page 15 (page 17 in the PDF), section No. 2 ends "Three OXCART aircraft and the necessary task force personnel will be deployed from Area 51 to Kadena." On 25 June 2013, CIA released an official history of the U-2 and OXCART projects that officially acknowledged the existence of Area 51. The release was in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in 2005 by Jeffrey T. Richelson of George Washington University's National Security Archive, and contain numerous references to Area 51 and Groom Lake, along with a map of the