Not coincidentally, Cyprinodon diabolis’s troubles also date back to this period. In January 1952, President Harry S. Truman added Devils Hole to Death Valley National Park. In a proclamation, Truman said his goal was to protect the “peculiar race of desert fish” that lived in the “remarkable underground pool” and “nowhere else in the world.” That spring, the Department of Defense detonated eight nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site, about fifty miles north of Devils Hole.
