Los Alamos Historical Museum & Bookstore

Elite '09

244

435

Lisa A.

Houston, TX

8/19/2008

We started our Los Alamos tour here and I think it was just as interesting as the Bradbury Science Museum. This old Lodge was one of the main structures of the Los Alamos Boys Ranch School and It was converted into a mess hall and guest quarters during the Manhattan Project. "On Dec. 7, 1942, a year to the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, A.J. Connell shared a letter from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson with the students and faculty. The U.S. Army was taking over the school's property in "the interests of the United States in the prosecution of the War..." Christmas holidays were canceled and a special schedule set up so the boys could complete the school year by February. The last four graduates, including Ashley Pond's grandson, Theodore Church, received their diplomas on January 21, while bulldozers and mechanical diggers were already tearing up the mesa to make for the Manhattan Project."

The museum connected to the Fuller Lodge has a lot of interesting artifacts, letters, and pictures and you get a good feel for what life was like at the Lodge when it was the Boy's Ranch and then of life in Los Alamos during the war and the Manhattan Project. It's all quite fascinating! Definitely stop by this historical museum before heading to the Bradbury Science Museum to see what life was like for the scientists, soldiers, and families that were sequestered into the hills to produce the nuclear weapons that ended the war.

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