Los Alamos: Pre-Manhattan Sites

Long before the Manhattan Project came to the Pajarito Plateau, the Ancestral Pueblo people lived in the area. Two to three families of Tewa-speaking people likely occupied this Pueblo around 1225. It would have included bedrooms, kitchens, storage rooms, and a semi-circular kiva used for ceremonies and meetings. The Pueblo is part of the Los Alamos History Museum campus.

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.

Décor and art have helped makes houses “homes” for generations. At the cavates in this behind the fence area, you can find evidence of how the Ancestral Pueblo people fixed up their homes. Find out more about tour reservations and schedules on the Bradbury Museum website.  

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.

This memorial commemorates the building where the world's first atomic device was assembled. When the Manhattan Project acquired the Los Alamos Ranch School, engineers took advantage of the existing buildings, including a small icehouse on the bank of Ashley Pond. Scientists assembled the nuclear components for a test device, known as “the Gadget”, in the Ice House. The Gadget was detonated on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity test site on the Alamogordo Bombing Range.

Hike the Kwage Mesa Trail to gain a better understanding why Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves selected the Pajarito Plateau for their top-secret laboratory.   Groves chose the site in part because the mesa tops and canyons provided the remote, inaccessible landscape the Manhattan Project required. The Kwaga Mesa trail is a 4.3-mile (6.9 km) loop that offers extraordinary views of these mesas and canyons.

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.

In an ideal location for a house, Edith Warner lived in the adobe structure near the bridge. As the railroad came through, she collected packages for the San Ildefonso Pueblo and the Los Alamos Ranch School. In 1942, a man that Warner had known because of his many trips to this area, came by and said, “Your life’s going to change.” That man was Robert J. Oppenheimer, the soon to be director of the of the top-secret lab in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. .

From the outside, Pond Cabin looks like any typical Southwestern ranch building. Its rustic appearance belies the role it played in groundbreaking plutonium research. During the Manhattan Project, Emilio Segrè used the cabin as an office for his plutonium research team. This building is on Los Alamos National Laboratory property. You can only access it through guided tours offered on specific dates.