Day 103 - Friday - Los
Alamos here we come
We have one more night at Bandelier and today we drive the
10 miles to Los Alamos. This, of
course, is the former "secret city" where the atomic bomb was
designed in WWII. Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL) is still doing classified scientific research and to get into
the town you have to drive through half a mile or so of the lab area. So you go through a security checkpoint both
entering and leaving. I have to show my
driver's license and say where and why we're going, and I have to vouch for
Vicky! A tame version of the security
people had to undergo in the 1940's, as we'll find out.
Once in town the first shock, especially for Vicky, is its
size. In WWII it was home to about 6,000
people, all who whom used the address PO Box 1633,
Santa Fe NM and
couldn't tell anyone what they were doing. It's currently home to about double that
number. Our first stop is the Bradbury
Science Museum,
and after 2.5 hours all we've seen is the orientation movie and the history
gallery, where we both study every exhibit in detail.
We learn about the Uranium bomb "Little Boy" and
the totally different Plutonium Bomb (originally called The Gadget. The bomb
dropped on Japan
was called "Fat Man".)
Each works in a different way to create a critical mass of
fissile material and start a chain reaction.
We learn about the timeline for
the development and many of the people who were involved, from famous
scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi to the women who kept
the place going and the technicians who worked on the development. The day to day life was hard - other than the
project leaders everyone lived in hastily built structures, and endured
freezing winters and blistering hot summers.
But, as one woman put it, whenever things got bad you still had the
amazing views!
We still have 4 more galleries to see but take a break for a
walking tour of the town, that takes us past homesteaders' cabins, sites of
1940's barracks and the dining room of the Ranch
School. This school, founded in the 1920's by a Chicago
businessman named Ashley Pond, provided a thorough academic and physical
education for well-to-do boys. The boys
slept outside on a patio in all weathers!
The school closed abruptly in February 1943 when the US Government requisitioned
the campus "for a secret purpose".
The Principal of the school received orders not to tell anyone why it
had closed! The small lake in the town
was named Ashley Pond by the boys - the name still sticks but no report on what
Mr. Pond thought of the idea!
After a visit to Starbucks we return to the Bradbury
Museum and each goes our own way
until it closes at 5pm. I enjoy a thought provoking exhibit focusing
on the two sides of the issue "Was President Truman correct in dropping
the bombs on Japan?" This is timely for us as we'll be seeing an
opera on this topic next week.
They throw us out at closing time, just as the skies open
for the afternoon thunderstorm, so we huddle in the doorway until it pas, then
drive back to the campground to feed the children and have our own dinner. Later we walk through the forest to the
amphitheater for a ranger talk on the "3 Sisters" - Beans, Squash and
Corn. Ranger Jason spis a fascinating
tale about how the sisters interact in nature.
We also realize this was the same Ranger Jason who kindled our interest
in President John Adams when we visited the Adams House in Massachusetts
back in 2016. It's cool to make the
connection and realize what a mine of information this young man is!
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