The Town That Never Was

We had quite an adventure today. After breakfast we went to Los Alamos, NM which is the home of the Bradbury Science Museum. It contains the history and exhibits of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and it's ongoing scientific research. Los Alamos is located in the Jemez Mountains and the beautiful scenic drive to get there is amazing. It's located about 45 minutes from Santa Fe and you climb about 2000 feet in that time period. It's remotely located on top of a mesa and at night, you can see the lights of Los Alamos from Santa Fe. The Laboratory employs 9300 regular employees, 1300 students, 800 consultants and a grand total of 14,000 people. The annual budget is $1.8 billion dollars. Pretty impressive!!!

The conflict that darkened Europe in the late 1930's at first cast no shadow there on the sunny Pajarito Plateau. But soon World War II shook the entire world. Los Alamos, once the site of a boy's ranch school. became the focus of the secret project to develop a new weapon, one that derived it's power from splitting the atom. From this, the atomic bomb was discovered. Los Alamos National Laboratory is a scientific research laboratory focusing on National security. The Laboratory was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the nation's top-secret program to develop the atomic bomb.

Since 1943, the Laboratory has strengthened our national security by developing and applying the best science and technology to these three primary goals: 1. Ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent 2. Reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism 3. Solving other national security in defense, energy, the environment and infrastructure. The Laboratory adheres to the core values of intellectual freedom, scientific excellence and security.

This is called the town that never was because during all the time that they were working on the atom bomb, no one who lived there was allowed to say anything about the project or where they were living since the project was top secret. All they could give anyone was a post office box number in Santa Fe if they needed to be reached , so that's why Los Alamos is was called the town was called the town that never was.

I was especially interested in all of this because our dear friend who lives in Raton, NM is closely connected to the Laboratory. He is an engineer and scientist and works closely with the scientists at Los Alamos as well as people in Washington. We will be spending time with him and his wife next week. He's Frank's big fly-fishing buddy and long time friend.

After we returned from Los Alamos, we had lunch, went to a movie (Waitress, which was very good), came home for about an hour and then went to a new Japanese restaurant for dinner. It's been another long and wonderful day and we're ready for a shower and bed. In the words of Miss Scarlett, "Tomorrow is another day"!

Pcasso