ASK: What is History? HISTORY tells a story. You have a story, a history. Every place and person has a story. Someday people will say to you – what was it like when you lived here, what happened to you? You’ll tell them a little bit of your story. Los Alamos has a story too, and we’re going to talk about a little bit of that story today. Did you ever stop to think – what was here before the government built this town? Or what was where your house is now? How can we find out what was here? It’s not always written down in a book; sometimes we have to figure the story out for ourselves. Sometimes finding out about the story of a person or place is like trying to solve a mystery. We don’t know for sure what happened but we have certain clues which we use to figure out what probably happened.

Can you think of some clues we might use to help us figure out what happened a long time ago?

LAND: Look around. Where there are no trees maybe someone cut them down. A mound of earth may mean there is an Indian ruin buried under the dirt.

ARTIFACTS: We look for things that people may have dropped or thrown away or left behind. Rusted nails or old shoes may mean that people lived near there once. I’ve brought some artifacts with me today; we’ll look at them later.

PEOPLE: Los Alamos’ history only goes back about 100 years so we can still talk to people who lived here a long time ago, or whose parents lived here. They can tell us what it was like.

PHOTOS: These are clues we use often because we can look at pictures and really see for ourselves what was here.

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