 WAC and chemist Helen Gowen feeds Timoshenko and friend. Courtesy/Reid Cameron family and Los Alamos Historical Society Archive By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society Many famous names emerged from the Manhattan Project years on the Pajarito Plateau, but not all were scientists. Haskell Sheinberg, who came to Los Alamos as a member of the Special Engineer Detachment and stayed at the lab after the war years, remembered one such name. When Sheinberg was interviewed by the Atomic Heritage Foundation for the Manhattan Project Voices, he commented that dogs “were just allowed to roam” and remembered one such dog named Timoshenko, “the only dog allowed into the Tech Area, the main Tech Area.”
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 A moment in history: In 1992, LANL Director Siegfried Hecker and VNIIEF Scientific Director Yuli Khariton shake hands on an airfield in Russia. Photograph by Vladimir Shmakov By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society In 2018, Russian scientist Vladimir Shmakov walked past the doors of the library for the Physics and Mathematics department at the Russian Federal Nuclear Center for Technical Physics (VNIITF). A display of new books caught his attention. It included a two-volume set of Doomed to Cooperate, and on the cover was a photograph he took in 1992. “I was pleasantly surprised to see a photograph that I took in Sarov almost a quarter of a century ago,” Shmakov said. Doomed to Cooperate was published in 2016 by Bathtub Row Press, the publishing wing of the Los Alamos Historical Society. Shmakov had no idea that one of his photographs had been used for the cover until he saw it in that library display.  Ranch School masters and boys construct the dam in Los Alamos Canyon that created a reservoir to supply water to the school. Courtesy/Los Alamos Historical Society Archive By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society When Peggy Pond Church first saw the site where her father would one day open a school for boys, she was 12 years old. She remembered it in later years as “not much more than a homesteader’s farmhouse, a few sheds, and a muddy puddle of water.” That mud puddle would one day become a centerpiece for Los Alamos. What were the events in the life of Ashley Pond, the small body of water? The first mention of the shallow depression that would become Ashley Pond dates to the homesteading era, which began on the Pajarito Plateau in the 1880s. Water was scarce for the homesteaders, who learned dryland farming techniques. They depended on rain water and snowmelt and often hauled water from sources miles away. When rains came, the depression would collect water, and homesteaders nearby would bring their livestock to the temporary pond, a depression that became known as the Stock Watering Tank.  Los Alamos Ranch School Fir Patrol, 1940, by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Courtesy/LAHS Photo Archive, Parkhurst Collection By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society As noted in the book Los Alamos: The Ranch School Years, “photography played an important role in advertising and promoting Los Alamos” from its early years to the closing in 1945, but photography also made a huge contribution to historians who have worked to document the 25 years of the school’s history. There are copious pictures of everyday life at the school, from classrooms to sleeping porches to trail rides and camping in the Jemez. A few photos are like the family vacation pictures of a memorable moment not quite in focus—but most are not. Many are works of art and composed beautifully, sharp and framed perfectly through the lens. The reason for that, and for our good fortune all these years later, is that LARS Director A.J. Connell had the foresight to see the importance of a good photographic record and to hire two of the best photographers in the West to help with that record—T. Harmon Parkhurst and Laura Gilpin.  Commencement in Graduation Canyon, 1921 (Courtesy of Los Alamos Historical Society Archive) By Sharon Snyder
Los Alamos Historical Society In this time of disrupted events, including the graduation ceremony for the Los Alamos High School Class of 2020, I chose to do this column on Graduation Canyon to coincide with a time when many teens in our town had looked forward to wearing caps and gowns to their ceremony. Fate handed them a disappointment, but commencement is more than the celebration. The first graduations on the Pajarito Plateau were held in the early 1920s as the Los Alamos Ranch School began to send some of its young men off to college. Not all of the boys who came to the school had intentions of graduating here. Some families sent their sons for a year or two of “toughening up” to gain stamina, in some cases because the boys had been ill and needed the fresh mountain air and exercise to improve their health. The ranch school opened in 1917, and in 1921 it held its first graduation for two boys—Bill Rose of Santa Fe and Wallace Kieselhorst of St. Louis.  Camp Hamilton as it looked circa 1951. Courtesy/Paul Bombardt By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society Two weeks ago I wrote about Camp May, the getaway for senior boys at the Los Alamos Ranch School (LARS), but there was also another camp, one primarily used by the younger boys. Camp Hamilton has a longer, more detailed history. In 1918, the year after the Ranch School was founded, a man known only as F. Coomer leased a bit of land from the U.S. Forest Service to build a two-room log cabin in Pueblo Canyon east of the Otowi Pueblo site. Coomer was the general manager of the Rocky Mountain Camp Company, and he guided tours out of Santa Fe into Pueblo Canyon to an area he called Tent Cities of the Rockies. He showed his guests the rock-capped, cone-shaped mounds of tuff scattered through the area. By Sharon Sndyer Los Alamos Historical Society  Boys from the Los Alamos Ranch School’s Spruce Patrol at Camp May (date unknown). Courtesy/Los Alamos Historical Society Archive The Los Alamos County Park known as Camp May has long been enjoyed as a place for picnics, camping, hiking, birding, and many other outdoor pursuits, but a look into its history can make possible an even greater appreciation.
Camp May came into existence in the early years of the Los Alamos Ranch School (LARS) when a cabin was built in 1922-1923 on a site leased from the Forest Service. The large cabin with its stone fireplace became a popular base camp for weekend trips into the mountains and for skiing and hunting trips for the older LARS boys. The cabin was a gift of George and Edith May of Chicago. Their son, George T. May III, was one of four graduates of the Ranch School in 1923. The generosity of the May family and the advantage of special use permits from the Forest Service helped to enlarge the school’s campus without the need to purchase more land. The Ranch School would eventually own more than 750 acres including its main campus around Fuller Lodge, but the use of thousands of acres of national forests and park land greatly enhanced the possibilities.  This letter written in WWII and sent from France to a Women’s Army Corps (WAC) at Project Y in Los Alamos remained a mystery for 76 years. Courtesy/Los Alamos Historical Society By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society Sometimes the old saying “it’s a small world” is amazingly true! That statement definitely relates to the circumstances of a letter written in WWII and sent from France to a Women’s Army Corps (WAC) at Project Y. A native of Oxford, Miss., Katherine “Pat” Patterson joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps—soon to be changed officially to WAC—in autumn of 1942. She was called to active duty in December and was soon on a train headed to New Mexico along with several other WACs. They were to report to Lt. Col. Whitney Ashbridge on arrival at Project Y. Cpl. Patterson was 22 years old and was among the first 200 military personnel assigned to the Manhattan Project on the Hill. She began work as a clerk in the Army Service Forces. As with most families during World War II, Pat had other family members in the Armed Forces. Her brother, Jim Patterson, was serving in France. In the way of siblings, Jim decided to have a bit of fun with his sister and sent a letter that would send up red flags for the mail censors and get Pat into a precarious situation.  Katherine Stinson. Courtesy photoBy SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society In the early 1900s, a young Alabama woman named Katherine Stinson contacted famed aviator Max Lillie to ask if he would teach her to fly. His response: “Not a chance.” He was looking at a girl 5 feet tall and maybe a 100 pounds. She was small, but she was also persistent. Lillie eventually gave in and taught her to fly. And fly she did!  In this photo, María and Marcos Gomez are revisiting the site of their homestead on Two-Mile Mesa. Behind them is what was left of a corral. (Los Alamos Historical Society Photo Archives.) By Aimee Slaughter
Los Alamos Historical Society How did people in the Pajarito Plateau’s past get their water? How did they live in a dry environment like ours? Ancestral Pueblo people who lived here hundreds of years ago used ingenious dryland farming techniques, and homesteading farmers at the turn of the twentieth century also conserved water for their farms and families. The Los Alamos Ranch School had to provide water for students, staff, and animals at the school. When the Manhattan Project took over the area, a rapidly growing population strained infrastructure, and providing enough water to homes was a constant concern. For hundreds of years, people have solved the challenges of finding water in a dry environment and have created diverse and vibrant communities here on the Pajarito Plateau. |
AboutThese articles are written by the Los Alamos Historical Society Staff. Many of these articles were originally published by the Categories
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