5/10/25: Our Historical Los Alamos Walking Tour

After hiking in Bandelier National Monument that morning, Steven and I drove the short distance to the Manhattan Project National Historical Park in Los Alamos. In 2004, President George W. Bush signed legislation for the National Park Service (NPS) to investigate whether the Manhattan Project, an ambitious scientific and engineering endeavor that forever changed the world, should be the subject of a NPS unit. After more than a decade of research and community input, President Barack Obama signed the park into existence in 2015. Run jointly by the NPS and the Department of Energy, it's a non-contiguous park, with two other sites located in Oak Ridge, Tennesssee and Hanford, Washington. The park includes portions of the WW II-era sites where the United States developed the world's first atomic weapon. 

The photo showed Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project Laboratory Director, and General Leslie Groves, the Military Director, with other scientists and military personnel standing at Ground Zero on July 16, 1945, at a "shake test" to replicate what the Fat Man bomb would experience in the bomb bay of a bomber. 

To join the Manhattan Project, scientists agreed to become part of the top-secret war research in an unspecified field in an unknown part of the country. Scientists were directed to travel to Santa Fe and arrive at an office near the plaza. Most of the scientists were men, but not all. Many of the women following their scientist husbands took support jobs at the Laboratory. Approximately thirty scientists belonged to the British Mission. Several more were Jewish and European refugees such as Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Otto Frisch, Emilio Segre, and Edward Teller. Local Hispanics worked at the project, some of them living on site. Buses brought other men and women from neighboring pueblos and villages to "the Hill" to work as laborers and maids.

Early in 1943, approximately a thousand people lived in Los Alamos; by the end of 1944, there were more than 5,500. The average age was just 25. Since many scientists were young and could bring their families, more than 80 babies were born in 1943 in Los Alamos or, as their birth certificates showed, in P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe! After that, about ten newborns were born each month, which greatly annoyed General Groves, who thought civilians were taking advantage of the military hospital. 

A time and place that changed the world: The fear of Nazi Germany developing an atomic bomb led Albert Einstein to write a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, prompting an American effort to build the bomb first. It all began in the office of the US Army Corps of Engineers, located in Manhattan's Engineer District. Thus, a collaboration between the military and civilians began, an effort known as the Manhattan Project. Over thirty sites across North America were a part of the Manhattan Project, but three sites played key roles. The uranium purification facility was located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The plutonium processing facility was built in Hanford, Washington, and the site for designing and building the bomb was Los Alamos, New Mexico, codenamed Project Y.

The Los Alamos site was chosen for the natural isolation and security provided by the area's geography and because of the existing structure of the Los Alamos Ranch School, which was closed in early 1943 to allow the army to begin further construction. Hispanic homesteaders on the plateau were required to vacate their land abruptly with scant compensation. Altogether, 54,000 acres were acquired for Project Y. 

Frances Dunne was a Project Y explosives technician who field tested mock devices, the only woman at Los Alamos in that capacity. She was hired primarily because of her small hands and her mechanical ability. Dunne and the rest of the crew handled all types of explosives and set off experimental shots at several outlying technical areas.

I was, quite frankly, surprised that in this hyper-politically charged atmosphere, there was still information included at the Visitor Center of women's contributions during the Manhattan Project!

The Military and the Manhattan Project: The story of the soldiers of the Special Scientific Detachment, called SEDs, is one of the most fascinating of World War II and is unique in the history of the Manhattan Project. More than 1,800 young men were sent to Los Alamos as SEDs because of their scientific or technical training after being selected from the army ranks and later enlisted directly from universities. At Los Alamos, they worked as technicians and scientists, using their knowledge and experience to contribute to the design of the atomic bomb.

The Post Commander reviewing the Special Engineering Detachment at inspection:

When the war ended and before they were mustered out of the army, many SEDs had the opportunity to attend "Los Alamos University," a series of scientific classes taught by some of the world's best scientists, including Nobel laureates, who had gathered in Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project. After leaving the army, most SEDs returned to college to complete their education. Many became PhDs and went on to have productive scientific careers. Among the Special Engineer Detachment veterans are chairs of physics departments and at least five Nobel laureates. I read that the contributions of the military personnel at Los Alamos to science and humankind are unparalleled.  

Oppenheimer is shown the second from the right on the top row. 

Los Alamos was a secret army post, home to Project Y, and an unprecedented military and civilian collaboration to develop an atomic bomb. Though isolated from the world, it relied on local communities, with a rapidly growing population of young soldiers, civilians, refugee scientists, and families.

Outside the National Park Visitor Center were brightly-colored asymmetric benches and sculptures repuropsed from salvaged propane tanks after the tanks had been carefully dissected and the pieces reassembled, without any additional shaping of the material. One of the propane tanks used for these sculptures was originally constructed in 1945. 

We then began a historical walking tour of Los Alamos, starting with sculptures of Oppenheimer and Groves of the Manhattan Project. The images were designed to memorialize an historic photo of the two men standing at Ground Zero at Trinity Site after the successful plutonium test on July 16th, 1945. The sculptures "honor two gifted World War II leaders with almost polar opposite personalities whose unique partnership won the wartime race to build an atomic bomb."

In the center of town was the magnificent, three-story, historic Fuller Lodge that was part of the Los Alamos Ranch School after the turn of the century. The Lodge served as the school's dining hall, community center, living quarters for some staff, and the infirmary.

Oppenheimer, who spent many summers in northern Mew Mexico exploring and riding horses over the countryside, was familiar with the Ranch School. As he and Groves searched for a site in which to place their top-secret wartime laboratory, Oppenheimer suggested Los Alamos might be an ideal location. When Groves saw Fuller Lodge in the fall of 1942, he finalized his decision to choose the isolated site because of its electricity, running water, and some already constructed housing. The Lodge remained a dining room and also housed visiting scientists and served as a community center throughout the Manhattan Project. It remains the heart and soul of the Los Alamos community. 

The Ranch School mounted student body passing Fuller Lodge, circa 1936:

Built in 1918 behind the Lodge was the Guest Cottage, the oldest continually-used building in Los Alamos. Groves and other visiting dignitaries stayed here during the Manhattan Project. It's been home to the Los Alamos History Museum since 1968. 

It was fun to see images of the pipe-smoking Oppenheimer on coasters and stickers!

A minute from the Ranch School and the Guest House was the Baker House that had been built by the School's chief mechanic. During the Manhattan Project era, the cabin served as emergency housing for essential personnel. After the war, Richard Baker, a Manhattan Project veteran, made the house his home until 1995. It was purchased in 1992 by Los Alamos County to preserve it as an important part of the city's historic district. 

The Power House was a stone building that housed the Ranch School's electrical generators that had to be disassembled regularly to scrape out the caked-on carbon. Once the power needs of the Manhattan Project outstripped the school's electrical system, the 600-square-foot structure was remodeled to help ease the area's housing crunch. The building has since hosted the Red Cross and National Historic Park staff among other organizations.

Bathub Row: When the top-secret World War II Manhattan Project took over the Los Alamos Ranch School, housing for the hundreds and then thousands of people pouring into town was limited. Dormitories and apartments were constructed by the army who also brought in trailers, Quonset huts, and other portable units. The log and stone cottages on this tree-lined street had been home to the Ranch School staff as they were the nicest living quarters in the community. They were also the the only ones in town with cast-iron bathtubs, as iron was needed for the war effort. All living quarters built by the Army came only with showers, no tubs. A history teacher and wife of a prominent Manhattan Project metallurgist wittingly named the street Bathtub Row, a name that has stuck to this day. According to Google Maps, this is the only Bathtub Row on the planet!

The Romero Cabin: After Victor Romero built his first homestead on a nearby mesa in 1913, the Romero family rebuilt it about twenty years later. The government appropriated the cabin in 1942 and moved it to the center of Los Alamos in the 1980s. 

Just outside the cabin was an ancestral pueblo site that was home to a group of Tewa-speaking people that may have come from Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico or Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado. They built structures with blocks of tuff, packed volcanic ash. This building was two stories high and contained bedrooms, cooking areas, storage rooms, and a semi-circular kiva used for ceremonies and meetings for the two to three families who lived here. 

Likely, overpopulation, drought, depleted soils, and declining numbers of game caused the ancestral puebloans to leave the Pajarito Plateau around the 1500s. Archaeological excavations were conducted by Ranch School students and lab scientists. The site was reconstructed in the early 2000s with help of experts from Bandelier National Monument and input from local pueblos. 

The Hitching Post: From 1917 to 1943, each student at the Los Alamos Ranch School was assigned a horse, responsible for its care, and required to learn horsemanship. Since the Ranch school curriculum included Scouting, they established Troop 22 in Los Alamos, the first horseback troop in the country. The troop, the third oldest in the nation, is still active today.

The Bethe House was built in 1931 as a residence for the Ranch School's business manager. During the war, it was home to future Nobel Laureate, physicist, and bathtub-lover Hans Bethe and his wife. Though Bethe only lived in the house for six months, the home was named in his honor for his significant contributions to scientific work in Los Alamos. Now part of the History Museum, it houses the Cold War Gallery and exhibits featuring the role Los Alamos played in that conflict and what everyday life was like in Los Alamoa. It was later gifted to the Los Alamos Historical Society. 

About one in seven Americans planted victory gardens during the war, growing more than one million tons of vegetables. Even though Los Alamos was an Army base during the war, town residents planted victory gardens in 1944 and 1945. The community created 25x50-foot spaces near the Fuller Lodge lawn for anyone who wanted to start a victory garden.

Next door was the Oppenheimer House, originally built for a painter who taught art and music at the Loa Alamos Ranch School. During the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer lived here with his wife and their two young children. Though the home was now owned by the Los Alamos Historical Society, it was still closed to the public. Luckily, I was able to get a glimpse of the interior, though, when I peered through the front door!

Out back was a Plymouth, or was it Oppenheimer's Plymouth?

I think this was one of the rare WW II dormitories built to house staff for the Manhattan Project. 

Steven and I then spent some time in the excellent Bradbury Science Museum that was set up by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It expertly laid out what led up to the development of the atomic bomb from the American perspective, namely the world was in dire straits in the 1930s from the Depression, Fascism and anti-Semitism was boiling up in Germany and Italy, Germany was expanding its military and threatening its neighbors, Japan was pursuing its policy of domination and expansion, and Germany may have been on the verge of developing its own nuclear warfare.

Scientists entered the picture in 1938: In a groundbreaking experiment, physicists in Berlin showed that the uranium nucleus could be split, releasing energy that had bound it together. Scientists immediately saw that this nuclear fission process could form the basis of a weapon of stupendous power. 

News of the Berlin experiment spread quickly through the international physics community. Scientists fleeing the Nazis reported that Germany might already be working on an atomic bomb. Albert Einstein sent a now-famous secret letter to President Franklin Roosevelt alerting him to the military implications of the recent discovery of fission. We all know what happened as a result of work done at Los Alamos with the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Having seen a year ago the horrors of the decision to drop the bomb in Hiroshima, I was surprised there was no discussion or reference that I saw of the effects of the bombs' development and destruction at the Science Museum.

Oppenheimer's Downfall: I read elsewhere that after the bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, Oppenheimer opposed the further development of nuclear weapons, including the hydrogen bomb. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover began investigating him for links to the Communist Party and, even when no links were found, Oppenheimer was still stripped of his military clearance in 1954 during this nation's Red Scare and dismissed for opposing the arms race. 

A sign quoting words written by J. Robert Oppenheimer on Los Alamos' main street bears being repeated now in this scary political climate:

As long as men are

free to ask what

they must - free to 

say what they think - 

free to think what 

they will - freedom can never be lost

and science can never regress.

During the war, censors read all incoming and outcoming mail and monitored all telephone calls. All civilians shared an address, P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico prompting Sears, Roebuck & Company to send a letter complaining about 400 catalogs being sent to one address! When the Manhattan Project's existence was made known to the outside world in 1945, the local post office was again used.  

After the war, many residents rushed to return to their pre-war lives. Some, though, realized that research and development into nuclear science must continue. Today the Laboratory is a world-class center for scientific research in everything from supercomputing to astrophysics to climate science. 

Outside of town was a re-creation of the historic security gate all Manhattan Project workers passed through to enter Los Alamos.

Our  guidebook described the "dramatic Canyon Rim trail (that) skirts the edge of Los Alamos Canyon for 1.5 miles (and) provides the best vantage point for appreciating the town's getting atop the finger-like mesas." Sadly, the trail's most appealing feature was the unique benches. Never before had we seen benches named explicitly for a site.

Our historical tour ended at the Manhattan Project Era Chapel that was originally intended for an army hospital in Santa Fe before it was moved to Los Alamos in 1947 when the military turned over the Manhattan Project base to the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission. 

It is one of 604 such chapels the Army built during the war and one of the few remaining. Initially, "all" faiths - Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant - used the chapel until the United Church took over the building as other faiths found their own places of worship in the late 1940s. 

I was extremely lucky to walk around inside for a couple of minutes as a music practice was taking place - otherwise, the church would have been shut.

Steven and I concluded our tour of the town that night at the Los Alamos Nature Center, overlooking a lovely view of the Sierra de los Valles Mountains.

Next post: Exploring Jemez, Laguna, and Acoma pueblos and another national monument,

Posted on May 18th, 2025, from Las Cruces in southern New Mexico where we were joined by our youngest, Zachary, and his girlfriend for the last few days. We were thrilled when he asked Noora to marry him this afternoon AND she said yes when the four of us were hiking on Dripping Springs Trail at Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument! Steven and I are so lucky to welcome her into our family as she's a gem! May your day be as blessed and happy.