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Between 1942 and 1945, the Ames Project produced 2 million pounds of purified uranium for the Manhattan Project out of a building on the Iowa State University campus nicknamed “Little Ankeny."

US Department of Energy/Ames Laboratory

 

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Nobel-Prize winning physicist Niels Bohr argued in 1939 that building an atomic bomb "can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory ...” Essentially, Bohr was right as the Manhattan Project grew to include numerous sites across the US and abroad. Most know the Manhattan Project for its three main centers of operation at Hanford, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge, which the US Army Corps of Engineers developed and maintained. Yet the project also relied on smaller military and civilian sites including research centers like the Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) at the University of Chicago in Illinois and the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University. Washington DC and New York City were important administrative centers. Mines in the US, Canada, and Africa supplied raw uranium. Explore the articles below to learn more about the sites beyond Hanford, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge that provided critical support to the Manhattan Project.