We are pleased to announce that the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) has awarded the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF) two grants to expand our “Ranger in Your Pocket” series, which provides online tours of Manhattan Project sites around the country. These grants will allow AHF to develop online tours focusing on Los Alamos’s historic Bathtub Row, where many of the top scientists lived, and on the Native Americans and farming pioneers of Hanford’s pre-war history.
The Atomic Heritage Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation have worked in partnership for over a decade to preserve Manhattan Project sites and create a Manhattan Project National Historical Park. With bipartisan and bicameral support, Congress may designate a Manhattan Project National Historical Park before the end of 2014.
On May 22, 2014, the House passed legislation for a Manhattan Project park as a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Similar legislation was passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in May 2013. With strong support among the Senate leaders, the prospects for enactment of the legislation as part of the NDAA in 2014 are very good.
The “Ranger in Your Pocket” series will help the Manhattan Project sites prepare for the influx of tourists predicted by the National Park Service. The “Ranger” site is a responsive website available to audiences worldwide on the Internet and on smartphones, tablets and other personal devices. “Ranger” programs have a wide variety of short, engaging audio/visual programs or vignettes that incorporate firsthand accounts and a variety of perspectives.
The first “Ranger in Your Pocket” tour is of Hanford’s B Reactor with a special section on “Life in Hanford.” Together, these tours offer visitors a choice of 50 programs that bring many different aspects of the history to life. Hearing stories told by the Manhattan Project participants and their families in their own voices is a powerful experience.
The first National Trust for Historic Preservation grant, from the Johanna Favrot Fund for Historic Preservation, is for $5,000 to support the program “Ranger in Your Pocket: Online Tour of Los Alamos.” The project will highlight Manhattan Project properties in the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory National Historic Landmark District in Los Alamos, NM. This district includes Bathtub Row, where J. Robert Oppenheimer and other top Manhattan Project personnel lived. Also included is Fuller Lodge, the main dining and social hall for the scientists and their families, Ashley Pond and other historic properties.
Los Alamos is an important stop for heritage tourists. Every year, over 150,000 people from around the world visit Los Alamos. As visitors stroll down Bathtub Row or take a virtual tour on their computer, they can listen to scientists such as Hans Bethe and J. Robert Oppenheimer who lived in the former Los Alamos Ranch School cottages.
There will also be stories from a child’s perspective such as Vera Kistiakowsky who enjoyed horseback riding over the mesa and Peggy Parsons Bowditch who remembers when she and J. Robert Oppenheimer both had the chicken pox. Other vignettes will include scientists discussing the challenges of creating the first atomic bomb and wives talking about creating a community from scratch.
The second grant, from NTHP’s Innovation Fund, is for $10,000 and will support the program “Hanford’s Pioneers.” Representatives of the Hanford tribes and the agricultural farmers will talk about being forced off their land and evicted from their homes by the Federal government in 1943. Experts will talk about the Hanford Irrigation District and the still visible wooden pipes that once carried water from the Columbia River.
As one farmer recalls, the fruit orchards had apples, apricots, peaches, pears, plums and cherries. A former resident of White Bluffs remembers the ice cream store which the Army permitted to operate for the Manhattan Project construction crews. Through multiple voices, audiences will gain a sense of the challenges of life as a Hanford pioneer and the impact of the government’s eviction.
We are very grateful to the National Trust for Historic Preservation for their most generous and timely support. Our “Ranger in Your Pocket” programs will provide the public a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the Manhattan Project. Viewing the programs at home should encourage them to visit the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park sites. Once there, the programs provides a vast array of stories from the people who experienced firsthand one of the most transformative events of the 20th century.