Today, we took a car caravan trip to Los Alamos. We
drove up NM Route 502, also known as the Senator Clinton P Anderson Scenic
Route, it was a gorgeous drive. Five Miles out of Los Alamos we witnessed the
breathtaking views at the Anderson Overlook Park. It is in White Rock, New
Mexico and is high atop the Pajarito Plateau. It gave us a gorgeous view of the
Rio Grande Valley, Jemez Mountains and the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
Our first stop was the Los Alamos Visitors Center. It
is located in a small outdoor mall in the heart of downtown. The two ladies
there, were very helpful and gave us a little bit of direction. We gave Kent
and Jan a ride today. Jan was interested in going to the Manhattan Project
National Historical Park Visitor Center first. So, we walked the couple of
blocks to it. Along the way, we passed a unique art exhibit of an eagle.
Before we got to the NHP Visitor Center, we also
passed by the US Post Office, which was on our walking tour. This is the site
of the first post office in Los Alamos. Named after Otowi Railway Crossing, the
Otowi Post Office was located in the Los Alamos Trading Post. During the
Manhattan Project, however, the secrecy of the work required that all civilian
resident’s mail go to PO Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The current Post
Office was built in 1948 as part of a Community Center funded by the US Atomic
Energy Commission. The building signaled their ambition of developing Los
Alamos into a permanent community.
Seven years ago, Los Alamos dedicated two new bronze
life-size sculptures of Dr J Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie R Groves
created by the Santa Fe artist Susanne Vertel. They selected the Los Alamos
Boys Ranch School to become the home of the Manhattan Project research during
World War II. A Master Plan for historic sculptures was prepared, received
appropriate approvals, and accepted by the Los Alamos governing body. The Plan
identifies historic figures or representative figures to represent the five
eras of the Los Alamos Plateau: Ancestral Pueblo, Homestead, Ranch School, Manhattan
Project, and Cold War. The Historical Sculptures “Master Plan” proposes 18
bronze lifelike statues representing five eras of Los Alamos History be placed
in multiple locations in the downtown Los Alamos area.
At the Manhattan Project National Historical Park we
learned that from 1942 to 1945, the Manhattan Project, an ambitious effort to
harness the power of yet unimaginable science and technology, paired the
world's greatest scientific minds with thousands of skilled and determined
Americans. Their efforts created the planet's first nuclear weapons and ended
the most terrible war in the history of humanity...and it happened in secret. Keeping
the Manhattan Project’s secrets saved countless lives, preserving and
protecting the progress of literally earth-shattering new technologies. Secrets
shrouded incredible scientific technology and the efforts of thousands of
patriotic citizens in a seemingly impenetrable air of mystery.
The park currently includes three areas at Los Alamos,
while there is currently no public access to the Department of Energy (DOE)
facilities we learned about three facilities. Gun Site Facilities: three
bunkered buildings and a portable guard shack. These buildings were associated
with the design of the “Little Boy” bomb. V-Site Facilities: V-Site Assembly
Buildings that were used by laboratory personnel to assemble components of the
Trinity device in July 1945. Pajarito Site: Slotin Building, Battleship Control
Building, and the Pond Cabin. The Pajarito Site was used during the war for
plutonium chemistry research and later became the main site for critical
assembly work at Los Alamos after the war.
We toured the Los Alamos History Museum. For 50 years,
the Los Alamos History Museum, and its campus of unique homes and ancestral
ruins, has educated residents and tourists about what makes Los Alamos unique. Ironically,
the start of the history museum so many years ago came about because the Atomic
Energy Commission was thinking about razing Fuller Lodge, the former cafeteria
of the Ranch School. The Ranch School was acquired by the U.S. government in
February 1943 to make way for the Manhattan Project.
Through the years, the Los Alamos History Museum
acquired buildings and ancient ruins, allowing visitors to get a better feel on
how people lived and what went on during the Manhattan Project and even long
before there was a Los Alamos. The Museum’s main building is the restored Los
Alamos Ranch School Guest Cottage. The campus includes Romero Cabin, which
served as a home for homesteaders from 1913 to 1942, an ancient pueblo site,
the Hans Beth House and of course Fuller Lodge. The next five years should
bring some even more interesting changes, such as the addition of the house J
Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb and a key figure in the
Manhattan Project. We learned from the docent, that the museum owns the house
but the resident has lifetime residential rights, but, she is 99 years old.
Fuller Lodge was designed by Santa Fe architect John
Gaw Meem and built in 1928. It served as cafeteria, infirmary, classroom
building and social center for the Los Alamos Ranch School. At some point, I
need to tell you more about the Los Alamos Ranch School, another causality of
the Manhattan Project.
There was no Christmas vacation at the Los Alamos
Ranch School in the winter of 1942. Informed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson
in a Dec. 1 letter that the Army would take over the property in February 1943,
Ranch school director A. J. Connell advised his students that they would have
to work through the vacation to complete the school's annual curriculum. Laboratory
theoretical physicist Stirling Colgate, then a Ranch School student, remembers
that on the evening of Dec. 7, 1942, the students were called together and told
the news. Some of the more observant physics students had recognized Ernest
Lawrence among the advance parties sent to the school, so they could guess that
the Army project would have something to do with nuclear physics. Lawrence, who
had won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 and appeared on the cover of Time
magazine in 1938, was not unknown to the wider world as were his companions, J.
Robert Oppenheimer and Edwin McMillan.
The closing of the Ranch school was the end of school
founder Ashley Pond's dream. He had come west as a boy to be reinvigorated by
the thin, fresh air of New Mexico, as had many others suffering lung diseases. Pond
planned to establish a ranch school on a nearby homestead owned by his ranch
manager, H H Brooks, where boys might "learn by doing' in the outdoors, in
a style reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt's ideal of the vigorous life. Before
leaving to join the American Red Cross in 1918, Pond bought Brooks' homestead
and hired Connell, then a Santa Fe National Forest ranger, to run the school.
Connell organized the school on the model of the Boy
Scouts of America, consonant with Pond's vision of the outdoor life, and the
scout uniform became that of the school. Its students became Troop 22 of the
BSA. Connell added a standard college preparatory curriculum to the existing
routine of afternoons and weekends spent outdoors. The regime endured by the
boys who came to the ranch school was almost as stiff as the tuition. Divided
into groups according to their physical maturity, they slept in the fresh air of
screened-in porches at the Big House (on the site of the present Community
Center). The seniors slept at Spruce Cottage (the home just north of the
historical society), the headmaster's quarters. The first headmaster was
Fayette Curtis. The academic program he mapped out with Connell included
English, history, mathematics, science, languages, art and music. Subsequently,
teachers like Church added advanced subjects like nuclear physics, physiology
and aeronautics. Between 1920 and 1942, about 40 students between the ages of
12 and 16 attended the school annually, paying a tuition averaging $2,400,
about $23,000 in today's dollars. Among the more famous graduates were Colgate;
John Crosby, founder of the Santa Fe Opera; Professor Edward Hall of
Northwestern University; New Mexico artist Wilson Hurley; and industrial
executives like Roy Chapin of American Motors and John Reed of the Santa Fe
railroad.
We gathered for lunch at the Blue Windows Bistro. It
offered us 2 tables of 8, with warmth and charm. The Blue Window Bistro has
been serving Los Alamos for over 30 years. Their goal is simple, to combine
excellent service in a unique atmosphere with a focus on fresh, local, quality
ingredients. Our meals were plentiful and delicious!
Thanks to the Blue Window Bistro, the curse that
plagued a string of restaurants at 1789 Central Avenue, appears to have finally
ended. Their success hasn’t been the case for several years. Central Avenue
Grill was once in this space, but went into bankruptcy in March of 2012. The
Dixie Girl restaurant took over the space in July of 2012, but the restaurant was
sold in November 2013.
They launched a “name the restaurant” survey “The
Manhattan Project” came out the winner. A bankruptcy judge ordered them to
close the doors in May 2015. High Elevation was in October 2015, but the
landlord took back possession of the space in May 2016. The Blue Window Bistro moved
here in January of 2017 and success is king!
After lunch, we ventured to the Bradbury Science
Museum. The Los Alamos technical areas of the Lab are not open to the public.
However, the Laboratory’s Community Programs Office operate the Bradbury
Science Museum, in conjunction with Bradbury Science Museum Association. It provides
a window into the history of the institution, its national security mission,
and the broad range of exciting science and technology research to improve our
nation’s future. We experienced the exhibits and interactive programs within
the Museum’s three galleries. The History, Defense and Research galleries.
We watched a film that tells the stories of the race
to build the first atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project. We learned of the
history of Los Alamos. Early in 1939, the world's scientific community
discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets of splitting a
uranium atom. Fears soon spread over the possibility of Nazi scientists
utilizing that energy to produce a bomb capable of unspeakable destruction.
Einstein penned a letter to President Roosevelt urging the development of an
atomic research program later that year. Roosevelt saw neither the necessity
nor the utility for such a project, but agreed to proceed slowly. In late 1941,
the American effort to design and build an ATOMIC BOMB received its code name —
the MANHATTAN PROJECT.
A breakthrough occurred in December 1942 when Fermi
led a group of physicists to produce the first controlled NUCLEAR CHAIN
REACTION under the grandstands of STAGG FIELD at the University of Chicago.
After this milestone, funds were allocated more freely, and the project
advanced at breakneck speed. Nuclear facilities were built at Oak Ridge,
Tennessee and Hanford, Washington. The main assembly plant was built at Los
Alamos, New Mexico. Robert Oppenheimer was put in charge of putting the pieces
together at Los Alamos. After the final bill was tallied, nearly $2 billion had
been spent on research and development of the atomic bomb. The Manhattan
Project employed over 120,000 Americans.
Secrecy was paramount. Neither the Germans nor the
Japanese could learn of the project. Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed that
Stalin would be kept in the dark. Consequently, there was no public awareness
or debate. Keeping 120,000 people quiet would be impossible; therefore only a
small privileged cadre of inner scientists and officials knew about the atomic
bomb's development. In fact, Vice-President Truman had never heard of the
Manhattan Project until he became President Truman. Although the Axis powers remained
unaware of the efforts at Los Alamos, American leaders later learned that a
Soviet spy named KLAUS FUCHS had penetrated the inner circle of scientists.
By the summer of 1945, Oppenheimer was ready to test the
first bomb. On July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico,
scientists of the Manhattan Project readied themselves to watch the detonation
of the world's first atomic bomb. The device was affixed to a 100-foot tower
and discharged just before dawn. No one was properly prepared for the result.
A blinding flash visible for 200 miles lit up the
morning sky. A mushroom cloud reached 40,000 feet, blowing out windows of
civilian homes up to 100 miles away. When the cloud returned to earth it
created a half-mile wide crater metamorphosing sand into glass. A bogus
cover-up story was quickly released, explaining that a huge ammunition dump had
just exploded in the desert. Soon word reached President Truman in Potsdam,
Germany that the project was successful. The world had entered the nuclear age.
Another film reviewed the work the Lab does today to
ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the US nuclear deterrent. Exhibits
include information on the Laboratory’s research on life sciences, achievements
in space, supercomputing, energy and the environment.
The most interesting exhibit to me, was the “Fat Man”
bomb exhibit. The "Fat Man" was the second plutonium, implosion-type
bomb. The first was the
"Gadget" detonated at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945. In the implosion-type device, a core of
sub-critical plutonium is surrounded by several thousand pounds of
high-explosive designed in such a way that the explosive force of the HE is directed
inwards thereby crushing the plutonium core into a super-critical state.
Dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, it was the second
nuclear weapon used in a war. There was a replica of the bomb. The original
weighed 10,800 pounds, filled with highly enriched plutonium core surrounded by
5,300 pounds of high explosives.
Another part of the Los Alamos History Museum is the
Hans Bethe House. These houses are on Bathtub Row, because they are the only homes that had bathtubs. It is now the Harold Agnew Cold War Gallery of the Los Alamos
History Museum. Formerly called Master Cottage Number One, it was the first
residence built by the Los Alamos Ranch School. The quaint cottage has been
home to eminent scientists. During the Manhattan Project, Edwin and Elsie
McMillan moved into the house with their young daughter, Ann. When they moved
out, Hans and Rose Bethe moved in. Both Edwin and Hans would go on to win Nobel
Prizes for their scientific contributions.
There was a “point system” used to decide who got to
live where. After the war's end, the home was assigned to chemist Max Roy, who
lived there for almost 50 years and served as director of the Weapons Division
at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, now Los Alamos National Laboratory. In
2013-14, philanthropists Clay and Dorothy Perkins purchased the Hans Bethe
House and donated the property to LAHS, which has transformed it into a gallery
with exhibits on Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project and Cold War.
In the 1930’s the Power House building housed the Los
Alamos Ranch School’s power generators. But, during the Manhattan Project,
housing was so scarce that explosives expert and E Division Group Leader George
Kistiakowsky moved into it.
We walked back to our car. We walked most of the
downtown area looking at all of the interesting remains from the Manhattan
Project era. On our way out of town, we spotted this sign. It is a recreation
of the icon entrance to Los Alamos.
It is a picture that is recreated in many mediums.
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