Giant desert triangle in NM!

As I was looking for The Road to Sandia on Google Earth this evening, I stumbled across a marker someone had put down for "convoy". This convoy seems to be right out there in the middle of nowhere-

Also of great interest to me was the series of pockmarks all over the desert to the south (a few to the north) of the convoy. I notice that the further they go from the convoy, the more defined they become. At the point nearest the convoy, they fade to little more than smudges. I've also noticed that they continue on sporadically into the desert, with the furthest point being a full 1.2 miles South-southeast of the convoy.

A I was zooming back out from the convoy a geometrical object grabbed my attention, behold!

A remarkable and very large equilateral triangle; each side is almost exactly 4,000 feet or 1,219 meters. It appears to have some sort of structure right in the center as well. I've also noticed that a road connects to the lower left portion of the triangle.

It's getting rather late, so I will let more active minds take it from here. I will say I think this is a man-made feature because of the small 8ft. by 8ft. structure that is almost dead center, coupled with the road leading into the triangle.

Coffee Talk amongst yourselves-

So the Earth got a tattoo in its earlier days. What of it?

Jokes aside, this does looks interesting. I'll have to whip out my Google Earth/Maps and look around myself. Does anyone recognize this symbol? Ever see something like this before?

Let the speculation begin!

[color=#80c0e0]Gentlemen, Start Your Search Engines!!

Its a bombing target I believe. There are many many threads here with that same picture. Id find them for you but it's getting late

Well that was quick. Did we already figure this one out?

Triangle in the Nevada desert...what is it?

Originally posted by PlausibleDeniability
Its a bombing target I believe. There are many many threads here with that same picture. Id find them for you but it's getting late

Seems plausible. There does appear to be some kind of airstrip to the SW of the triangle. Also, whilst it appears to be big on GE, it is only 3/4's mile long on either side. Each concentric circle is spaced 60 metres from the next.

To me it looks like what are being called "roads" are actually washes, and that the picture is of a roadless terrain. Since the circles and triangle don't follow the "bumps" (dips of washes, e.g.) they would have to have been drawn on over the topographic pic. I would guess someone has mechanically drawn military target figures over a topo photo.

Thanks Majik Ninja, I really should learn to use the search function I also noticed that I screwed up the thread title by saying NM instead of NV... blast!

The inactive bombing target explanation seems plausible, it seems rather odd that all the vegetation has grown back evenly and the earth doesn't really seem to be scarred at all (You can see several striations [stream beds?] running west to east along the triangle, wouldn't these patterns be interrupted if they had been bombed?).

Of course, given 20 years or more I'm sure the bomb scars would be eroded and the natural contours of the earth would return, while vegetation would grow back evenly.

So that brings us to the airstrip just to the west of the triangle. I was previously referring to this object as the "convoy", But after reading a few comments and reexamining the object in GoogE, It seems to be a primitive runway. Is 1,300 ft/ 395 meters enough room to take off and land a small plane? I think so.

So that means the pockmarks are most likely bomb scars, but heres what doesn't make sense to me; why use your own runway on practice bombing runs, shouldn't the bomb scars be on the triangle? or at least out in the middle of nowhere? Instead, you have a small series running NNW to SSE right across the runway. The runway itself doesn't appear to be hit though...
bleh... now I've boggled myself.

I'm just going to ask John Lear what he thinks, perhaps he knows something about this, or could at least give a more informed opinion than most of us.

Perhaps the runway is the target

These are bomb targets on the Nevada Test and Training Range. They have been discussed previously on ATS and other forums. For some reason, the triangular target (one of two on the Tonopah Test Range) really seems to get people excited. It is one of the older targets on the range and happened to be within the drop zone for external fuel tanks from the X-15A-2.