MAPR Cultural Landscapes Inventory for Tech Area 18

Description

Established on November 10, 2015, Manhattan Project National Historical Park is managed through a collaborative partnership by the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Energy to preserve, interpret, and facilitate access to key historic resources associated with the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was a massive, top secret national mobilization of scientists, engineers, technicians, and military personnel charged with producing a deployable atomic weapon during World War II. The project began as a multifaceted effort requiring the rapid advancement of nuclear physics and multiple engineering strategies to produce functional weapons designs and critical quantities of fissile materials, and produced weapons of unprecedented destructive capacity. The project included the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, a few weeks before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Coordinated by the U.S. Army, Manhattan Project activities were located in numerous locations across the United States. The park incorporates three of the most significant locations, each of which played an essential role in the Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. As part of the enabling legislation, Congress identified facilities and areas eligible to be included in the park, some of which are currently included in the park, and others which may be included in the future. The Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, determines which of these areas to include in the park. Los Alamos was the location of the wartime laboratory where prominent scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel collaborated to design and fabricate the first nuclear weapons. Military personnel, laboratory staff, and family members lived in the downtown area, which was located at the site of the former Los Alamos Ranch School. The laboratoryâ¿¿s Main Technical Area, a fenced complex of office buildings and research facilities, was also established in the Los Alamos townsite but no longer exists. The park includes several sets of structures widely dispersed within the grounds of the present-day national laboratory, located south of town.

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