King of the Road - February 2010
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Full Blast
Voyage to Los Alamos for science and adventure
Story and Photography by Lesley S. King
As I ascend a finger-shaped mesa to Los Alamos, I think of the generation of men who fought in World War II. Recently, my father, who was one of them and has been my travel companion on numerous adventures, died. Many of his contemporaries are seeing their last days as well.
Melancholy as this makes me feel, I can’t help but smile as I make my way through this town, on N.M. 502, 36 miles northwest of Santa Fe. Its very existence owes itself to men like my dad, determined individuals who tackled life with a full heart.
At my first stop, the Los Alamos Historical Museum, I meet Georgia Strickfaden, a local guide, who leads me through exhibits displaying the history of Los Alamos. It began with cataclysmic geologic activity, when, more than a million years ago, a volcano erupted and spread more than 600 cubic kilometers of lava and ash across the region. Today, that volcano’s 12-mile-wide crater is the Valles Caldera National
Preserve, an outdoor mecca 22 miles away along N.M. 4, offering hiking, fishing, cross-country skiing, and wildlife viewing.
The volcano’s legacy remains apparent in many places. It’s visible in the ruins of nearby 33,000-acre Bandelier National Monument, also along N.M. 4, where, beginning about 1150 ad, Ancestral Puebloans built cliff dwellings and great houses from the tuff, a soft, crumbly volcanic rock. Locals and visitors can hike on more than 70 miles of trails, passing ruins and climbing ladders into cliff dwellings. At the Alcove House, the more intrepid can climb a series of four ladders to a dwelling and reconstructed kiva 140 feet above the canyon floor.
DAY-TRIP TIPS For info: Where to go: Los Alamos Historical Museum Where to Dine: Hill Diner Where to Stay: Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites Where to Shop: Otowi Station Science Museum How to Tour: What to Read:
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Back in Los Alamos, Strickfaden and I step outside the Historical Museum to explore Bathtub Row—cabins built of tuff and logs that were once living quarters for the Los Alamos Ranch School, an institution begun in 1917 for, as she says, “the sons of the East Coast’s captains of industry.” Boys ranging in age from 12 to 18, including the young Gore Vidal and William S. Burroughs, came here to study, ride horses, fish, and ski.
These buildings along the Row were really what determined the community’s fate. In 1943, at the urging of notable scientists, including Albert Einstein, the U.S. government searched the nation for a place to develop the first atomic bomb. The site needed to be inland, easily acquired, have a mild climate, and be isolated enough that it was easily kept secret. “The Ranch School proved to be the ideal place,” Strickfaden says.
My next stop is the Bradbury Science Museum, where I learn more. I begin by watching a must-see 18-minute film, The Town that Never Was, and find out that, only 27 months after the government acquired the land here, the Manhattan Project completed the world’s first atomic bomb. The scientists, including project director Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, moved into the cabins along Bathtub Row—so named because they were the only buildings here luxurious enough to boast bathtubs, as opposed to the showers favored in the new barracks being constructed for the rest of the workers. The young researchers worked six-day weeks and late into the nights. As stated in the film, this secret town was unique: “no unemployment, in-laws, invalids, idle rich or poor, no jail, sidewalks, or paved roads.” And yet, thousands of people lived and worked here.
In 1945, the scientists completed “the Gadget,” as they called the atomic device they tested at the Trinity Site, near Alamogordo, in southern New Mexico. (The site is part of the White Sands Missile Range.) The resulting nuclear explosion created a massive mushroom cloud, an iconic image that today still echoes through the town in the forms of photographs and paintings. The detonation’s success was certainly celebrated, but the gravity of its power was acknowledged as well. After the test, Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu sacred text: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
Also at the Bradbury Museum I see replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man, the first two bombs built by the Project, and I reflect on what I’ve just seen at the Los Alamos
Historical Museum: haunting panoramic photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, after those bombs struck. Except for a few stray buildings, the cities lie leveled, completely charred. I also recall my father’s pained account of Hiroshima, which he visited as a soldier just months after the devastation.
The bombs “ended a war but started a scientific revolution,” states one display at the Bradbury Museum, which chronicles the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s many triumphs in science. With an annual budget of $2.2 billion, the Lab today operates more than 2,100 facilities and employs about 11,000 people. Museum Director Linda Deck guides me through dozens of interactive exhibits, on DNA research, brain mapping, climate change, radiation, and computing, among others. “The lab understands materials,” Deck says. “As an expert in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—it is dedicated to solving the nation’s security issues.”
My head swimming with facts, I take time to wander this town of 12,000 residents. The air here at 7,320 feet sparkles and the pace is slow, but what I notice most is the odd nature of the conversations I overhear. Over lunch, and later, in a local bar, I hear a language that could exist only in a town that has the nation’s highest per-capita population of Ph.D.s: 22 percent. People talk of quantum cryptography, trapdoor functions of polynomial integers, reciprocal space, heterogeneous multicores. The accents range from Russian to French to Japanese, with even a Texan twang or two. Defying “nerd” stereotypes, these brainiacs and their families are an active lot. They ski at Pajarito Mountain ski area, just minutes from town, skate at the Los Alamos County Ice Rink, and hike and mountain-bike 150 miles of trails traversing the town and the nearby Jémez Mountains. Like their predecessors and my own father, they’re determined to not only better the world, but enjoy it.
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"King of the Road" columnist Lesley S. King visits another little-known community in New Mexico each month.
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