Los Alamos

The road from Espanola to Los Alamos if most interesting . . . geologically interesting.  As one starts up the flanks of the Jemez Mountains, one starts seeing the Upper and Lower Bandelier Tuff and basaltic lava flows.  The lava flows primarily came from volcanoes to the south and southeast of present day Los Alamos.  However, some 1.4 million years ago, a large volcano exploded west of present day Los Alamos.  This eruption was some 600 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens.  Huge pyroclastic clouds and flows were associated with the eruption to form the Lower Bandelier Tuff.  Most likely, a caldera was formed a this time and eventually secondary volcanic vents formed until some 1.1 million years ago, another explosive eruption, again some 600 times larger than Mt. St. Helens, that sent huge pyroclastic clouds down the slopes to deposit the Upper Bandelier Tuff.

Tuff View

Upper and Lower Bandelier Tuff

The final eruption was the last big eruption.  The Valles Caldera was formed which is the basis of the Jemez Mountains.  It was on these steep volcanic slopes that the Los Alamos Boys Ranch and the Los Alamos Lab and city were established - an isolated, sometimes harsh environment located tens of miles from "anywhere"!

This is not the first time we have been to Los Alamos, but it is the first visit in more than 20 years.  The Norris Bradbury Museum has changed but yet still maintains some of the past history.

Los Alamos basically exudes history.  The Bradbury Museum has one room devoted to the past of Los Alamos during World War II along with a theater with a 15 minute film, but one needs to read every exhibit to understand the basis of Los Alamos.  Other rooms provide interactive exhibits for spurring young minds as to the realm of science.  And then another room exhibits the warheads, bombs, and technology of "explosives".

Such as the model of "Little Boy" which was dropped on Hiroshima.

Little Boy was a Uranium-235 bomb which used the "shotgun" method to create a critical mass for a fission explosion.

A model of "Fat Man" was right next to "Little Boy".

Fat Man was a Plutonium-239 bomb which used implosion to create a critical mass for a fission explosion.  The test of "The Gadget" at White Sands near Alamogordo just some three weeks before the "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki.

Then just a short distance down the road is the museum that documents the years of the boys school turned into nuclear lab.  Fuller Lodge and the Guest House are the only remaining buildings from the Boys Ranch and the early Los Alamos times.

Years ago, the museum at The Guest House centered only on the Boys Ranch and School which the Manhattan Project took over.  However, today the museum not only incorporates the Boys Ranch, but also the Ancient People of the Frijoles Canyon and the times of the Manhattan Project.  It is an excellent museum for the Los Alamos' area and its past.