Stories of Los Alamos

On March 26, 1943, Dorothy McKibbin reported to work at 109 East Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and learned that their employer was the secret Los Alamos Laboratory in the nearby mountains, part of the covert Manhattan Project. From her modest office, Dorothy became “gatekeeper” to Los Alamos since all civilian employees and many of the military personnel checked in through her office.

In September, 1942 United States Army General Leslie R. Groves was assigned to manage the Manhattan Project. He acquired funding, mobilized a diverse workforce including attracting top scientists, and selected the ideal locations for the project to ensure secrecy and success in this new, top-secret undertaking. Ultimately, Groves approved three locations for this new clandestine project: Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hanford, Washington, and Los Alamos, New Mexico.

On April 20, 1943, the University of California signed a contract with the United States Army Corps of Engineers to operate a secret laboratory hidden away in the mountains of northern New Mexico. This laboratory soon became home to some of the most revolutionary science in US history. Led by scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the staff at this secret Manhattan Project location called Los Alamos was responsible for the development and testing of nuclear weapons.

A controversial figure to this day, J. Robert Oppenheimer led the development and construction of the world's first atomic weapons. This article series explores his life from a young man, to his role in the Manhattan Project, to his blacklisting at the height of the Cold War's "Red Scare."

First in a series of three, this article highlights the pre-Manhattan Project Era life of Robert Oppenheimer, from his birthplace in New York to his time in New Mexico as a young man, followed by his college years, and into teaching at CalTech and Berkeley in California. On the cusp of Communism and political left-wing leanings, Oppenheimer finds himself, and the career he developed for many years, in the arena of atomic weapons and the start of World II.

The second article in a series of three explores J. Robert Oppenheimer's role during the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was appointed Director of the top-secret Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project. It was here that he and hundreds of staff toiled in secret, their work culminating in the Trinity Test, the world's first atomic weapon detonation.

Documenting, and preserving cultural landscapes of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The future of White Sands, and for that matter the nation as a whole, reached a watershed in the spring of 1945. The sequence of events in the Tularosa basin from April to August 1945 created the "atomic age" tensions that bedeviled the monument for the next five decades.

Challenges of creating a Manhattan Project National Historical Park unit.

More than 200,000 people died by the end of 1945 as a direct result of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945. After World War II ended, Japan and the United States worked faithfully to move toward peace. In the decades since the end of World War II, the two countries have evolved from bitter enemies to close allies. In addition, the three primary Manhattan Project communities have reflected on the bombings in poignant ways.