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| Los Alamos Historical Museum |
Los Alamos New Mexico is a short and highly scenic drive northwest of Santa Fe. Many people visiting Santa Fe, Taos New Mexico or both take a side excursion up into the Jemez Mountains and visit this very historic site. Los Alamos, aside from it's thousand year pueblo history, is probably best known as being the site for the
Manhatten Project during the early 1940's. It was in this town that the history of nuclear weapons began.
If you have the opportunity to travel to Los Alamos you'll find there's more than one good museum. One you want be certain to add to your trip planner is a very unique museum with a fun walking tour available that describes the history of Los Alamos and it's relationship to the Manhatten Project. Artifacts and actual buildings from the era are found at the
Los Alamos Historical Museum which itself is housed in the guest cottage of the old
Los Alamos Ranch School. The museum building is just to the north of
Fuller Lodge which was constructed in 1928. Fuller Lodge was the main building for the school. Fuller Lodge itself was built of course more than a decade before the Manhatten Project. The new structure was needed in Los Alamos due to the increasing enrollment of the Los Alamos Ranch School, a private boarding school established in 1917 by a man named
Ashely Pond from Detroit Michigan. The school program was fairly similar to the Boy Scouts of America curriculum.
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| Fuller Lodge |
The Los Alamos Ranch School was purchased by the federal government in late 1942 as was most everything else in the town as part of the Manhatten Project. The school formally closed in January 1943. During the Manhatten Project, the school building was used for conferences and other adjacent buildings were used for hosuing for project personnel. During the war years Los Alamos was home to thousands of scientists. When you tour the Los Alamos Historical Museum and tour the grounds of the old Los Alamos Ranch School, you'll pass by
Bathtub Row. There was a very good reason for this name.According to the Los Alamos Historical Society, the master cottages built for the Los Alamos Ranch School had cast iron bathtubs. The new housing built for the laboratory has showers but not bathtubs. Congress actually passed a measure restricting bathroom fixtures of which cast iron tubs was one. Yes, Congress' ineptitude even reared it's head in the early 1940's. The fact that these limited number of cottages from the school were already equipped with cast iron bathtubs made them both unique and desirable, thus the term Bathtub Row.
Another historic site on Bathtub Row, which has been made into a National Historic Landmark District, is the former residence of Manhatten Project Director Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his family. The cottage was built as part of the Los Alamos Ranch School in the late 1920's for an artist and relative of the Ranch School director. This and the other structures at the school site reverted to federal government use with their purchase in 1942.
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| Cottage on Bathtub Row |
The city of Los Alamos today is a bit like the old Los Alamos in some respects and in others quite different. Today, Los Alamos is like any other small city with the exception that it is still home to a national laboratory. What was started as the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and sometimes referred to as
Site Y, focused on the building of the atomic bomb, is today the
Los Alamos National Laboratory. The laboratory was managed by the University of California since the mid 1940's. Beginning in 2006, the management operations were switched to a new concern called the Los Alamos National Security LLC which is made up of the University of California, Bechtel, Babcock and Wilcox Technical Services and URS Energy and Construction. Operating contracts usually are for seven year terms.
Today, Los Alamos National Laboratory functions as a national security research institution. It's general goal is to come up with solutions, both of a scientific and engineering nature, to help solve the nations most complex problems.
You may also want to add a side trip to
Bandelier National Monument located adjacent to Los Alamos. Bandelier is a popular attraction showcasing the ancient cliff dweller inhabitants of thousands of years ago.
The Los Alamos Historical Museum is located at 1050 Bathtub Row.This is on the north side of Central Street at 20th Street. Los Alamos is about a 45 minute drive from Santa Fe. The drive itself is very scenic and you'll enjoy adding a visit to Los Alamos to your New Mexico trip planner.
(Photos are from author's private collection)
