Closed city on the mesa

Better have your papers in order. 

Looking east from Los Alamos at sunset

Few towns can rival the approach to Los Alamos. The two-lane road hugs the wall of a mesa for several miles. As it rises, the fingers of Los Alamos stretch onto other nearby mesas. 

The secret city built for the Manhattan Project still felt a little secret on high terrain in northern New Mexico. 

Atop the mesa, the road flattens as it passes the Old Main Gate, beyond which only those involved with the Manhattan Project could pass. The airfield felt larger than the town. 

Parts of Los Alamos remain off-limits to casual visitors; The modern buildings of Los Alamos National Laboratories sit on a hill above town. Visitors can take the main road through the lab to Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve. 

But the few remaining buildings from the Manhattan Project sit squarely in town, a historic district and series of museums detailing the history of this high country. 

Oppenheimer bust

The historic district was thick with tourists, although the historic sites I sought were much less busy. The visitor center lies next to Ashley Pond a sizable body of water for this dry country named for … Ashley Pond Jr., founder of the Los Alamos Ranch School. Prior to the Manhattan Project, the school was the only occupant of Los Alamos other than a handful of homesteaders who attempted to grow crops on the dry, unforgiving terrain. 

The Manhattan Project National Historic Park includes these sites in central Los Alamos operated by the Los Alamos Historical Society, as well as locations in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash. 

Robert Oppenheimer’s name and picture appears all over town. This goes beyond the recent blockbuster biopic from Christopher Nolan. Oppenheimer played a major role in picking the site, since his family had a ranch nearby and he knew a spot that allayed many of the U.S. Army’s concerns. 

He became the first director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and overseer of the atomic bomb’s development. That led to the successful test at the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico and the delivery of Fat Man and Little Boy, the bombs which the U.S. would drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of World War II. 

Prior to the Manhattan Project, the mesa housed the Los Alamos Ranch School and was farmed by a handful of homesteaders. The Ranch School buildings would form the early core of the Los Alamos townsite. Students had their own hitching posts for horses that they would nurture during the school term. Each student also slept on a screened outdoor porch no matter the weather. In any time, the ranch school offered a peculiar education. 

Once the U.S. Army decided on the Los Alamos site, school was not long in session. The school was given a month to vacate its building when the Army determined Los Alamos would become the Manhattan Project site. After a rushed graduation for existing students, the school shut down and the administration of the Manhattan Project occupied its buildings. The last homesteaders were forced off their land as well. 

Hans Bethe House

Oppenheimer House

Oppenheimer House window view

After the bombs were dropped, many of the buildings were torn down. The largest remaining building is the Fuller Lodge, which has been greatly expanded since its Manhattan Project days. The Los Alamos History Museum lies in the historic Guest House of the ranch school. The Hans Bethe House has been restored to its 1940s look. The stone walls feel unlike most home construction. The kitchen and bathrooms feel straight out of the 1940s.

In recent years, the Robert Oppenheimer House recently came into ownership of the Los Alamos Historical Society. The house appears in the film, and the period furnishings were donated by Universal Studios after Nolan completed filming. The house will require extensive mitigation before it opens to tours; for now, looking through the windows is as close as visitors can go. 

All the historic houses lie along the curiously named Bathtub Row. The name derives from the houses on the street being the only residences in Los Alamos to have bathtubs. 

Most of the rapidly constructed housing lacked amenities like bathtubs, leading the houses where the project leaders lived to earn that nickname. It has stuck, as Los Alamos’ lone brewery is the Bathtub Row Brewery Co-op. 

Since this is New Mexico, Bathtub Row wouldn’t be complete without the cabin of an early 20th century homesteader. Ruins of a pueblo among the historic houses showed evidence of Los Alamos’ earliest occupants. Even in ancestral Puebloan times, Bathtub Row was prime real estate.

Pueblo ruins

Last homesteader cabin (moved to NHP)