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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Manhattan Project Sites May Be Saved

By Phil Parker
Journal Staff Writer
       LOS ALAMOS — In the heyday of the government's supersecret Manhattan Project of the 1940s, Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos was a mess hall for the scientists racing against Nazi Germany to build the world's first atomic bomb.
    On Tuesday, more than 60 people packed into Fuller Lodge to discuss how to best preserve its history, along with the history of whatever other Manhattan Project relics still remain in Los Alamos.
    The meeting was hosted by the National Park Service. In 2004, President George W. Bush approved an act directing the secretary of the interior to conduct a study "on the preservation and interpretation of historical sites of the Manhattan Project for potential inclusion into the National Park system."
    The results, released late last year, found the Manhattan Project to be nationally and culturally significant enough for inclusion into the NPS.
    Three other towns in the United States also served as partial homes for the Manhattan Project: Hanford, Wash.; Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Dayton, Ohio. But the study rejected a park that incorporated all those sites as too difficult to manage.
    That leaves Los Alamos, and its still-standing historic locations like Fuller Lodge and Bathtub Row, where scientists lived during the Manhattan Project.
    Support for establishing a new park was overwhelming at Tuesday's meeting, with many who spoke favoring the most ambitious suggestion by the Interior Department: establishing a Manhattan Project National Historical Park managed by the NPS. Other suggestions included taking no action or creating a national consortium or national heritage area.
    "I give walking tours of the Historical District (which includes Fuller Lodge and Bathtub Row)," said Los Alamos resident Tom Sandford, "and I'm always taken by the age range of people who are interested. It goes from students to people who need to stop and take some rest on a bench."
    The Historical District would certainly be included in a Manhattan Project Park, but Sandford mentioned another intriguing aspect of the proposal that offers a logistical challenge.
    "It should include inside the fence, the V Site," Sandford said. "I've been there, and we ought to get those areas open to the public because people who go say, 'Wow, what happened here?'"
    The V Site, where scientists assembled explosives more than 60 years ago, still stands but is inside LANL's secured perimeter. If the V Site and other historically significant locations within restricted-access areas are going to be made available to members of the public, officials will need to determine what's allowable.
    Cindy Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, attended Tuesday's meeting and said she envisions the new park as "the prototype for a 21st-century park."
    "A lot of creativity can be brought to this process," she said.
    A few Los Alamos residents raised concerns that if Fuller Lodge or Ashley Pond, in the center of town, were designated as part of the NPS, their roles might change within the community. The lodge has been used for everything from conferences to art galleries to high school dances, and weekly concerts at Ashley Pond are a Los Alamos staple in the summer.
    "They don't just come in and sweep the town," Kelly said. "They won't just take over."
    NPS is soliciting public input on the park and in March a proposal will be drafted and submitted to the NPS director.

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