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.
U.S. Route 51 in Louisiana neighborhood in Jefferson Parish remained in the state highway system as a disconnected part of Route 33 until the 1955 Louisiana Highway renumbering. The remainder of US 51 carried no state route designation after the renumbering, which eliminated unnecessary concurrencies between U.S. and state routes. Paving projects during the late 1920s and early 1930s led to the early realignment of two portions of US 51 in Tangipahoa Parish. The original route between Independence and Amite City followed what is now known as Old US 51 and remained for a time in the pre-1955 state highway system as State Route 1094.