Los Alamos
New Mexico’s Atomic City
This was reprinted from Lonely Planet Santa Fe 1 (2003)
As it occupies what’s easily one of New Mexico’s most stunning settings, at the gateway to the Jemez Mountains, hot springs and ski areas, you might expect Los Alamos to be a kitschy resort town.
Not even close.
Just when you thought that the Cold War was over, this “Atomic City” is still awash in spy scandals and studded with WWII-era military-grade architecture, all centered on Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), probably the most sophisticated WMD lab in the world.
This isn’t a tourist attraction, it’s a scientific experiment. But folks fascinated by that one bright moment when humanity’s role on Earth fundamentally shifted – the day we took responsibility for safeguarding life itself – will want to see the birthplace of the nuclear bomb. And, perhaps, buy the T-shirt.
History
The secret city was founded by federal order in 1943, shortly after the US military appropriated Los Alamos Ranch Boy’s School and its isolated mesa-top location. Here, General Leslie Groves and physicist Robert Oppenheimer assembled an army of top scientists and engineers, furnished them with every possible resource and gave them a single mission: to build an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany.
Brainpower recruited from across the world reported to 109 Palace St in Santa Fe, where they were whisked out the back door and shuttled past menacing guard towers keeping watch over the code-named Manhattan Project. Housing was flimsy, water was scarce and security was tight.
Schoolchildren did not use their last names, scientists did not discuss work with their families and all correspondence was heavily censored. Information was given on a need-to-know basis; few on the project knew exactly how their creation would manifest.
The weapon was a blinding success. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear device detonated at White Sands, a luminous inferno that prompted Oppenheimer to quote the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” After which he lit another cigarette, having no further incentive to quit.
A month later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, were hit hard by the new technology. It was a revelation in warfare: At least 120,000 civilians were killed instantly and perhaps twice as many later, as the radiation’s residual effects took their toll, prompting Japan to surrender and end WWII. The USA became a world power, the word “fallout” entered the dictionary, and in 1949 the USSR tested its own nuclear device, getting the Cold War started with a bang.
Los Alamos remained federally owned and operated after the war, restricting visitors and keeping close tabs on residents, including communist party members Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for espionage. Finally, in 1957, Los Alamos was opened to the public, just like a normal city. Sure.
LANL remains the region’s top employer, but it’s not just for weapons of mass destruction anymore: Supercomputers, genome decryption and nuclear safety are the centerpieces of all the brochures. The Wen Ho Lee spy scandal, however, made it clear that there’s more going on around here than just cutting-edge medical research.
Los Alamos is still recovering from that debacle, ass well as the devastating Cerro Grande Fire of 2000: A controlled burn went horribly awry, devouring 220 buildings and 43,000 acres of forest surrounding the city and lab. The federal government refused to tell area residents what was – or is – stored out there, as that’s a matter of national security. But people familiar with nuclear energy and weapons have made educated guesses.
Plutonium and uranium, both of which are very toxic when inhaled, as well as radioactive isotopes of beryllium and cesium, were dumped unceremoniously throughout the area during the Cold War, without accountability to the civilian government. What was in that smoke, and what continues to flow down that mountain to Santa Fe, Española and area pueblos, remains the subject of much regrettably uninformed debate.