Los Alamos, New Mexico

On a recent trip to the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area, I took the short drive to Los Alamos to become more familiar with the nuclear arms race and our own country’s history of nuclear weapons development.  Besides being a beautiful and quaint town, the drives both to Los Alamos and back to Albuquerque were equally as fascinating.  The town has a couple of museums, both with artifacts from the nuclear arms race as well as quite a few nice restaurants and bars.  All of this is loosely surrounded by the National Laboratory’s Tech Centers and buildings dedicated to secret nuclear development.  It’s quite a unique town and atmosphere.

The town itself is very unassuming.  They have all the basics- a hardware store, a few motels, a grocery store, and a couple of ethnic restaurants.  There are a few good bars there as well, most of them are located on and around Central Avenue, which runs east and west like a main street through town.  The Bradbury Museum is located on this thoroughfare, as is the original Los Alamos School for Boys, where Mr. Oppenheimer and his colleagues met quite commonly during the development of the first nuclear bomb.  There are many historical markers and museums in Los Alamos, but the Bradbury is perhaps the most well known.

The Bradbury Museum offers an excellent timeline of nuclear weapons development.  Admission is free since the museum is a joint venture between the National Laboratory and a California university.  It also helps visitors get an idea of what Los Alamos was like during World War Two.  The film that plays in the auditorium, titled, “The Town That Never Was” pretty much sums up the top secret nature of the town during the war years.  The rest of the museum is like one big science lab and it invites children to experiment with some of the more interesting facets of physics, geology, and anatomy.  It was a real treat, even for adults.  The Bradbury Museum also contains life-sized replicas of “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”, the two nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945.  The whole experience left me both in wonder and in shock, that such a powerful force was used to kill tens of thousands of people at one point in history, and that that force still has the capability to wipe out our planet many times over.  It was a sobering yet eye-opening experience.

On the way out of town, which for me happened to be west, there is quite a lot of wildlife and beautiful forested areas to enjoy.  There is a huge caldera that sits directly west of Los Alamos that provided some really great views along the way.  I have read that this caldera, particularly the west side, was a highway fore Native Americans looking to travel quickly on foot.  There are quite a few archaeological and paleontological wonders between Los Alamos and Albuquerque.  The town of Los Alamos is located about 45 minutes from downtown Santa Fe and about an hour and a half from downtown Albuquerque.  It’s really worth checking out if you find yourself in the central New Mexico area and looking for something interesting to experience.