Because no large enough tract of open land was available near Boston, the array was constructed on a semi-desert property known as Volcano Ranch, about 16 miles (26 km) west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, at an altitude of 1,770 metres (5,810 ft). During 1957 and 1958, Linsley and Scarsi deployed 19 scintillation counters, which used fluorescent plastic disks similar to those of the Agassiz detectors, except that each counter incorporated four disks viewed by four photomultipliers. Initially the area of the array was 2.5*10 m, which is to be compared with Agassiz's 10 m, but in 1960, after Scarsi had returned to Milan, Linsley spread the detectors over an area of 10 m.