Area 51 Palmdale facility. A search for a suitable testing site for the U-2 was conducted under the same extreme security as the rest of the project. He notified Lockheed, who sent an inspection team out to Groom Lake. According to Lockheed's U-2 designer Kelly Johnson: The lakebed made an ideal strip from which they could test aircraft, and the Emigrant Valley's mountain ranges and the NTS perimeter, about north of Las Vegas, protected the test site from visitors. The CIA asked the AEC to acquire the land, designated "Area 51" on the map, and add it to the Nevada Test Site.
Minnesota State Highway 51 Highway 51 parallels State Highway 280 through Falcon Heights and the Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul. State Highway 51 was authorized in 1933. The route was paved by 1935. The original alignment on the south end of Highway 51 was from West 7th Street up Edgecumbe Road to Snelling Avenue. This section of Highway 51 was later rerouted to Montreal Avenue. From 1934 to 1935, the north end of Highway 51 previously followed Snelling Avenue northbound to County Road B in Roseville, then 51 turned westbound to Fairview Avenue and ran northbound along Fairview Avenue and New Brighton Road to