In 1967, the Atomic Energy Commission decision maker in Los Alamos asked a group of residents to recommend alternatives for a community building named Fuller Lodge. Members of the American Association of University Women responded. Two results were: the founding of the Society and the preservation of the Lodge. The Society’s first project was to establish a museum and archival collection. The space selected was the stone cottage next to the Lodge.

Thus, began the Historical Society’s commitment to interpreting and promoting the history of the Pajarito Plateau. Ruins from 1350 A.D. are found in the heart of the historic district. Next to them is relocated a log cabin used by Hispanic families whose land grants represented a time when the Plateau was used for farming, grazing, or timbering.

The Museum tells the stories of those who were to arrive on the Plateau. As New Mexico attracted more and more persons for its scenic beauty in the 20 th century, it also attracted persons who were seeking healing from lung ailments. They came through the railroad trunk to Santa Fe. Santa Fe’s hospitality became the gateway to the Pajarito Plateau long before others would need to find a lady at 109 E. Palace Avenue.

While the Museum of Fine Arts was opened in Santa Fe in 1917, Ashley Pond of Detroit and partners purchased the Ramon Vigil Grant to found a school for boys. Some boys needed healthy clean air as well as fine schooling to prepare them for college, where many were accepted into Ivy League schools.

The school became known to another Easterner who came to New Mexico with his brother and tutor to regain his health before attending Harvard. His visits on horseback to the school would change life on the Plateau.

Events in faraway places in Europe and Asia forced closure of this school which had trained exceptional and successful leaders in business and the arts. The pain of being uprooted was expressed by Ashley Pond’s daughter who married one of the school’s masters and raised three sons. One son, Allen, is here today.

The Garden

She remembers
that when they cut down the pine tree
to make room for a road
she cried
as the saw chewed through the red bark
and the yellow flesh of the tree bled
its oils and odors on the clean air.

So when she returned
to the house belonging now to strangers
a city with numbered streets having taken the place of the forest,
and saw the fruit trees she had set out as seedlings,
the poplars beside the porch,
wisteria waving on the log wall
and the red roses by the door,

all now in the season of winter but
triumphantly alive still,
it seemed to her like a miracle,
She wondered what long-forgotten god had kept the little garden
safe, a place to walk in
in the cool of the day, perhaps, lonely as leaf fall,
while the city spread and no one remembered Eden.

Peggy Pond Church
1959

Published in New Mexico Quarterly (Spring 1960, XXX:1, p 33)
Written after a visit to Los Alamos in 1959 [provided by Sharon Snyder]

The next occupants of the school buildings and grounds came in 1943 for the “duration of the War.” Some were emigres from German and Italian persecution, ironically “enemy aliens” whose scientific knowledge brought them to a different kind of imprisonment, including censorship and military oversight.

In a monograph by former Los Alamos Historical Society president and well-known Los Alamos political leader, historian, and college president, Marjorie Bell Chambers, she wrote,

These young people, both civilian and military, would stop at the hotel La Fonda, a landmark of the Santa Fe Trail. During the war, FBI agents became its hotel waiters, or worked at the registration desk, to observe if persons would accidentally drop words such as “Los Alamos” or “Atomic.” Just up the road from this historic Palace of the Governors were the offices of the Manhattan Project where new employees would be assigned a ride to Los Alamos or to receive overnight accommodation. Imagine arriving at Lamy RR station in the middle of wide open spaces, much like the tourists to Santa Fe had for decades, knowing only to look up 109 E. Palace Avenue in a nearby town!

During the war and for some time afterwards, the town was fenced to keep unauthorized persons out. Many stories are told about Richard Feynman finding holes in the fence and upsetting the guards. A song was written about meeting friends who did not have badges at the “Main Gate” which continued the mystique of what kind of community exists on the “Hill.” The gate came down in 1957.

Marjorie continues, “When their mission, to produce the atomic bomb, was completed, many of the scientists and others who had done this work decided to stay here in what had been a muddy army post beset with water shortages, difficulties in transportation and communication, inadequate housing, as well as other hardships. Those who stayed would be joined by others, and together they would create a community worthy of its first reason for being and of the natural beauty in which it was embraced. Business and medical people, teachers, construction workers, clergy all joined the scientists in building schools and churches, a hospital, a library, parks and places for sports activities, businesses, streets, attractive neighborhoods.” The Battle for Civil Rights, Monograph 3, 1999.

Marjorie’s monograph details the beginning of political leadership in the town, how the Atomic Energy Commission appointed 15 members to the Town Council so that citizens would have a recourse. Because federal and state jurisdiction was not clear for this land purchased and confiscated by the federal government for defense research, pressures from those who remained in Los Alamos hounded laboratory officials. Efforts to develop a charter were thwarted. Who could vote in federal elections? County clerks were tested. Judges even denied a couple adoption rights; another couple could not get divorced. Lab secrecy held up citizens’ petitions for the right of representation. Since they paid taxes, they wanted representation. And, they needed to know where to pay traffic fines! Eventually, the state assumed jurisdiction over Los Alamos on June 10, 1949.

The next charter commission was successful in getting official and public support. The suggestion to make Los Alamos an incorporated city/county came from attorney William Keleher, of Albuquerque.. There are not many communities in the U.S. who have this civil freedom. Brilliant legacy! The county was so small and so unique that it became the only New Mexico county of its kind, an H-Class county.

When Los Alamos celebrated its 50 th anniversary, many of the past members of the different governing bodies were honored at a special banquet. Many past elected officials still live in the area, such as Martin Gursky. One of the earliest women to serve was Evaline Robinson. Marge Schreiber has moved back to Los Alamos. Marjorie Bell Chambers passed away last summer, leaving an impressive local, national, and international legacy and history of the Atomic Energy Commission of Los Alamos. Richard Daly, now a Santa Fe resident, was imprisoned by the Japanese for three and one-half years before coming to Los Alamos and serving in public office. [The county has had three sets of husband and wives serving on the council at different times: Kyle and Mike Wheeler, George and Chris Chandler, and John and Patt Rogers.]

Today our County Council is represented by past Council Chairman Nona Bowman, Robert Gibson, [and Mike Wheeler] who have already been introduced to you. Thank you, for attending and showing support from the county government. [Former county councilors present were Patt Rogers, Sid Singer, Kyle Wheeler, Jeannette Wallace, and myself Nancy Bartlit.]

Los Alamos was represented at the State legislature by Harold Agnew, Sterling Black, Arturo Jaramillo of Chimayo, John Rogers--his wife Patt is here today,-- and the popular Steve Stoddard. After redistricting in the 1990s, Los Alamos voters were divided into three senate districts comprised of neighboring communities, which expanded our representation. Members of the NM House of Representatives must live in Los Alamos. Those who have served are: Boyd West, Tom Roberts, Foster Evans, Ed Grilly, Vernon Kerr, and, presently, the Honorable Jeannette Wallace. Because the Laboratory and community were intertwined, the Honorable Nick Salazar from San Juan Pueblo went to bat for Los Alamos and its school funding many times.

Scientists continued to come to Los Alamos from comfortable academic lives in urban centers of America and Europe. Others came from nearby Indian and Hispanic villages. They came to support the “certain critical work having to do with the development of atomic energy for defense and peaceful purposes, which can be done here better than anywhere else,” Louis Rosen stated when running for county council in 1962, as the federal government prepared to dispose of control of the community. The community of 18,000 still has The Big Band, a symphony orchestra, a light opera company, choral groups, outdoor concerts, two ballet companies, a little theater group, and a large bevy of artists with excellent art shows, two museums, a nature center, a YMCA, sports fields and programs, horseback riding, rodeos and parades, bicycling and hiking. There are 177 organizations listed by the Chamber of Commerce. There is a radio station, public television station, movie theater, restaurants, apparel and furniture stores, gifts and decorating stores. It has master gardeners and its League of Women Voters started the first NM Farmers’ Market (the daughter of the LWV lady is here today). The town was an early NM adopter of Art in Public Places and Dark Nights.

In proximity to Bandelier National Monument and the Valles Caldera, the historic district of Los Alamos lets visitors experience where great decisions were and still are being made. Laboratory sites worth preserving are concealed from the public view because of the age-old dilemma of security, so the historic district and science museum tell the history. The Los Alamos Historical Society and archives are housed in Fuller Lodge. Recently we acquired, with the generosity of the Suydams, ownership of the home in which the Oppenheimer family resided during the war years. The Society successfully petitioned the county to rename the road which runs along the five Ranch School homes “Bathtub Row” to denote historic perks during wartime scarcities.

The Society has championed the eventuality of a Manhattan Project National Historical Park which would also include Oak Ridge, TN, and Hanford, WA. We have testified before the Department of the Interior on the importance of Lamy and Santa Fe to the project.

The Los Alamos Historical Society and its supporters commend Museum Director Frances Levine and Mike Stevenson for understanding the links between our communities and telling the stories through our museums, books, and lectures.

Today, we honor Los Alamos leaders, its Living Treasures, and its community members. We thank the Society Members for their support during the last 40 years. Our members who lived most of their lives on “The Hill” grow older. As they do, the tools of telling history are passed to others and other formats. The exhibits in this beautiful new state museum will help the future Society leaders accomplish this task.