A Day of History......."If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday." ~Pearl Buck
A trip to Los Alamos was a must do.
I have always been curious about "The Manhattan Project" and have recently been watching The Manhattan TV series.
The Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos was the perfect place to get the real story.
The museum has the history of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project, as well as over 40 interactive exhibits within five galleries. It is amazing and very well done. Most of the displays are done behind glass or back lit so it wasn't possible to take pictures. They had replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man, the first nuclear bombs, with scientific explanations to help understand nuclear weapons. After the bombs were created at Los Alamos the Los Alamos National Laboratory has continued with the following purpose.
"The central mission of the Laboratory is to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent while reducing the global threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. As part of that mission, the Laboratory provides the necessary expertise and technology developed here to help the nation respond effectively to significant threats of broad scope and to help make the world a safer place."
I took this photo from their website. This shows what great displays they had. It made things clear so that it helped us understand. Those scientists were/are so smart. Walt and I just kept wondering how their minds work. So unlike mine that is for sure.
But I easily solved these puzzles. It is my OCD that must see things in order.
What I really came for was to get background on the "Town That Never Was". Los Alamos, once the site of a boys’ ranch school, became the focus of the secret project to develop a new weapon, one that derived its power from splitting the atom. The level of secrecy was astounding. The loyalty and pride that they all displayed without question is remarkable. The scientists recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and their families, had to work in complete secrecy. Their drivers’ licenses listed only numbers, not names. Even relatives could not know where the scientists were working. All of their mail was screened to ensure they said nothing to give away their location. Photographs could not include anything that might identify the landscape of New Mexico. The American government had to ensure that the Axis Powers had no idea what was happening at the isolated site in New Mexico. The Museum had numerous accounts of the people who worked there and they say they were proud of their work and did not question why they were required to work in such secrecy. While there were some "leaks" by the press the real story was never truly discovered until after the fact. There were Soviet spies who infiltrated the project and German and Japanese tried but the US were the ones successful. I felt proud of them and we discussed that this could never happen today. There are no secrets anymore. Social media and the behavior of people today would not stand for it.
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history."
After a nice picnic lunch at a park in Las Alamos (where on the other side of the park there were people jousting in full Old English costume) we drove the few miles to White Rock where we caught the shuttle to Bandelier National Monument.
Between 1934 and 1941 workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worked from a camp constructed in Frijoles Canyon. Among their accomplishments is the road into Frijoles Canyon, the current visitor center, a new lodge, and miles of trails. For several years during World War II the park was closed to the public and the Bandelier lodge was used to house Manhattan Project scientists and military personnel.
The buildings that the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed are still in use. During our travels this year we have seen so many great things that the CCC has constructed. They did impressive construction and their hard work shows in so many places. It was such a good program. Too bad we no longer have something like that. All those unemployed could be doing good works and gaining experience.
Bandelier National Monument has over 33,000 acres of rugged but beautiful canyon and mesa country as well as evidence of a human presence there going back over 11,000 years. Petroglyphs, dwellings carved into the soft rock cliffs, and standing masonry walls are there to be seen.
We took the Main Loop Trail Hike through Frijoles Canyon.
The canyon walls appear to be sandstone but they are actually volcanic ash that compacted over time into a soft, crumbly rock called tuff.
Frijoles Creek flows year round. This was a reliable source of water for the Ancestral Pueblo people
This underground structure called a kiva was an important part of the ceremonial and cultural activities of the Pueblo people.
Thes grassy areas in the canyon and others on the surrounding mesas were used as fields and planted with corn, beans and squash.
These remaining walls belong to the village of Tyuonyi. It was a large pueblo built on the valley floor. It was one to two stories high and housed approximately 100 people.
The stone walls would have been smooth plastered with mud. Rough hewn logs (vigas) would have supported ceilings making first and second stories.
Compared to homes today the rooms were very small. Most of the ground floor would have been used for food storage.
The volcanic tuff that forms the cliffs are full of holes from erosion because the rock is very soft. From the valley floor you start to climb toward the south facing cliff walls where the cliff houses were built.
Some of the holes were dug out further and used to live in. They have been classified as cavates. The lower walls were usually plastered while the ceilings were smoke-blackened. Smoking the ceilings hardend the volcanic tuff and made it less crumbly. I was surprised at how small it was but I learned that the Pueblo people were much shorter than the people of today. Women were no more than 5 feet and men would be considered tall at five feet six. Their average life expectancy was only 35 years.
The trail continues to climb and there is a nice view back down the canyon.
Soon you find rock drawings. This one is supposed to represent a feathered serpent that was an important figure because it had an association with water.
I found the volcanic tuff formations almost whimsical. Like children had been building sandcastles.
Some of the stairs we had to climb were steep and skinny. But those Pueblo people had no such luxury to get up to their homes.
This cavate was used for weaving. It had narrow beams in the ceiling that served as loom supports and anchors in the floor to keep the weaving straight. Although today both men and women weave, traditionally the weaving was done by men.
By building dwellings against the rock face housing units could be several stories tall. You can tell how many stories they were by the rows of holes. The holes were where the poles or vigas were embedded into the cliff to support the ceilings.
Sometimes behind the dwellings were cavates that were used as well.
Above the top row of holes are several petroglyphs.
And there are pictographs too.
The trail continues on down the canyon floor back to the visitor center. Leaving us to contemplate the reason that compelled the Pueblo people to leave the place they had called home for over 400 years. Sorry about the length of this post but it was a full day of sights that I wanted to remember.
A wonderful day of ancient history and more contemporary history that again reaffirms how little we know but how fortunate we are to learn a little more as we travel this amazing country.
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
Confucius