Los Alamos: Secret Cities & Communities

Ashley Pond has been a prominent feature of Los Alamos since the homesteading and Los Alamos Ranch School eras. Strolling around the pond, you may walk in the footsteps of famous scientists, Ranch School students, or the cattle who drank here.

How special is your bathtub to you? In wartime Los Alamos, most residents lived in hastily constructed housing. Houses with amenities like bathtubs were rare and reserved for the highest-ranking members of the Manhattan Project. These well-built homes with their luxurious bathtubs gave this street the nickname “Bathtub Row.” Visitors to Los Alamos can still walk down Bathtub Row today.

T-101, a civilian women’s dormitory, housed women civilians, or non-military staff who were working for the Manhattan Project. Some of the earliest dormitories built on the mesa, they were designed by architect Willard C. Kruger, who also designed many non-military facilities for Project Y. While there is only one dormitory still standing today, Project Y was said to have four civilian dormitories, two men and two women housing structures.

Fuller Lodge served as the dining hall for the Los Alamos Ranch School and as a community center for Manhattan Project workers. By far the largest of the remaining school buildings, Fuller Lodge over the years has played an important role in the Los Alamos community. Today, it is an art center.

Physicist and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe headed the Manhattan Project’s Theoretical Division, a small but prestigious group that studied critical mass and nuclear efficiency.  While in Los Alamos, Bethe lived in a house that was first built for the Los Alamos Ranch School for boys. The house is now part of the Los Alamos History Museum, and contains the Harold Agnew Cold War Gallery, which explores the Cold War history of Los Alamos through artifacts and exhibits.

The Los Alamos History Museum leads visitors on a journey from the Pajarito Plateau's Ancestral Pueblo people to its homestead history, through the Ranch School era, and into the Manhattan Project. Their campus includes the Hans Bethe House, the Oppenheimer House and a guest cottage that Gen. Leslie Groves loved to stay at.

Behind the barbed-wire fences and armed guards, a group of thespians practiced their lines. The members of the Los Alamos Little Theatre Group created a sense of community that transcended the civilian and military divisions that sometimes existed in this top-secret town. The group performed wherever they could find space until 1971, when they secured permanent headquarters in this wartime cafeteria.

This building is a replica of the historic security gate all Manhattan Project workers passed through to enter Los Alamos. The building is a bathroom for Main Gate Park. If you are visiting Los Alamos with an RV camper, you may park at Main Gate Park. Oversized vehicle parking is limited in downtown Los Alamos.

Manhattan Project Scientific Director Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a visionary scientist and an inspirational administrator. Built in 1929, the Oppenheimer house served the Los Alamos Ranch School before the Manhattan Project took over. Oppenheimer, his wife Kitty, daughter Toni, and son Peter lived in this home from 1943-1945.

This building in downtown Los Alamos originally housed the electrical generator for the Los Alamos Ranch School. After the establishment of the Manhattan Project, the Power House became George Kistiakowsky’s home. Kistiakowsky  joined Project Y to investigate the feasibility of developing an implosion-type weapon using shaped explosive charges.