NEW MEXICO, DAY 4: VALLES CALDERA NATIONAL PRESERVE AND LOS ALAMOS

 June 28, 2021

This post covers two places that at first glance appear to have nothing in common other than that we visited them on the same day: the Valles Caldera National Preserve and Los Alamos. Read through the post and see if you can find the common link.

After our trek through Bandelier National Monument, we headed into the Jemez Mountains to the Valles Caldera National Preserve, which contains one of three supervolcanoes in North America, the other two being Yellowstone and Long Valley (eastern California, the central Sierra Nevada Range). A series of volcanic explosions here a million years ago was 500 times larger than the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980. The resulting caldera is 13.7 miles across and is crisscrossed by streams that give it a lush green hue.

This panoramic camera shot just doesn't do the vastness justice. The valley is ginormous.

More shades of green than I knew existed carpet the flat caldera floor, and dramatic clouds provided a nice backdrop for photos.

A dirt road leads into the heart of the caldera. We drove for two hours, hoping to see one of the herds of elk that live there, but with no luck.

With all the streams that run through the caldera, I thought for sure we would see some.  Bob couldn't handle NOT seeing any, so he returned early the next morning while I slept in. He saw dozens (hundreds?).

Along with the green grasses, there were plenty of purple flowers . . . 

. . . some gossiping neighbors . . . 

. . . and lots of prairie dogs, especially near the entrance.

Before you get too enamored with these cuddly little critters, however, read the sign.

Our next stop was the city of Los Alamos. We came down the mountain, following the GPS directions on our phone, which took us past the Los Alamos National Laboratory (known these days by its acronym LANL). Hey! This is the home of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb! There was nothing telling us we couldn't pull into the parking lot of one of the buildings and so we did, and we took a few pictures. It all seemed pretty benign.

There were signs on the buildings and fences telling us to keep out, but we didn't even get out of the car. I cropped a photo to get this view, which is obvious because of its fuzziness.

These days, LANL employs over 10,000 people and partners with universities for scientific research in the fields of physics, engineering, medicine, biology, geoscience, math, computational science, etc. 

We were a little surprised by the names a few of the streets, which I thought were surprisingly lacking in good taste. Farther on was a street named Bikini Atoll and another named Oppenheimer Drive (the latter being acceptable).

As we left the LANL campus and started down the hill to the city of Los Alamos, we spotted three mule deer grazing at the side of the road. They didn't seem to mind too much that we were there.

However, next we came upon a security checkpoint, kind of like a border crossing or the fruit inspection station in California, where we had a totally different kind of reception. A man in military garb stepped out of the little house and asked Bob for is driver's license then proceeded to quiz us on what we were doing in the area. He noted that both Bob and I had cameras on our laps. He told us not to take any pictures. This was confusing to us as we were leaving the lab area, and we hadn't seen anything on the road prohibiting us from driving up to the buildings or taking photos. He then told us that if we took more photos, their drones would catch us and we would be "removed from the area." What area? The one we were leaving? Los Alamos? New Mexico? The United States? 

We were so confused. We didn't know if he was talking about what we'd already done or what we might do. He told us not to come back. Bob pointed out that we'd been at the Valles Caldera and that this was the only way to Los Alamos. We had no idea what the guard was so aggressively upset about. So weird.

Once we got to the city of Los Alamos (referred to as LA--also confusing to us Southern Californians), we found the LA History Museum, which includes the history of the city long before the Manhattan Project and the laboratory, as well as some information about the Manhattan Project (the latter being infinitely more interesting than the former). 

In front of the museum stands a statue of "Two gifted WWII leaders whose unique partnership won the wartime race to build an atomic bomb."  Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer was the civilian laboratory director and General Leslie R. Groves was the Commanding General who oversaw the project.

The first atomic bombs were "conceived, designed, developed, built, tested and fielded" in a mere 28 months.

Before we went inside, we stopped to see the Memorial Rose Garden, which "was established in the 1950s as a memorial to honor deceased residents because there was no local cemetery." It was originally somewhere else but was moved to this spot in 1958 and now contains over 500 rose bushes. It also includes some memorials to those who worked on the bomb or died in the war.

The garden is part of the Blue Star Memorial By-way, one of the many U.S. memorials that are part of a program begun in 1945 to pay tribute to the U.S. Armed Forces. We had seen another sign like the one glued to the rock (below right) when we visited Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California.

We were still feeling a little creeped out and insecure because of our experience at the security stop, and we carried that feeling into the museum, making it hard to rejoice in the success of the Manhattan Project. 

This Information board in the museum includes this quote from someone who worked in the lab during the Manhattan Project: "I found that the extreme concern with security was morbidly depressing." (Edward Condon, nuclear physicist who resigned from the Manhattan Project after six weeks.)  Yeah, we hear you, Edward.

In spite of the tight security, at least three known spies passed secrets to the Soviet Union.

The small museum is crammed with good information.

This is "The Gadget," which was tested near Alamogordo, about 200 miles south of Los Alamos, on July 16, 1945.

Three weeks later:

 

I came away most intrigued by this man, the genius behind the Project:

So tell me, what is the common link between Valles Caldera and Los Alamos? 

READING

These are the two books I want to read. They were both available in the little bookshop inside the museum: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes and American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which was published in 1986, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, the 1987 National Book Award for Nonfiction, the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.  I'd call that a sweep!  At 896 pages it is a big commitment, but it is supposed to be incredibly well written and a gripping read. The audiobook has 1,420 reviews and gets 4.5 stars on Amazon.

American Prometheus, published in 2006, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. At 721 pages, it is a little bit shorter than the other book but still quite long. It has 669 reviews and gets 4.5 stars on Amazon.