Preserving our Historic Properties

V-Site Restoration Project Receives Award
The Laboratory's V-Site Restoration Project was one of 21 national award winners honored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. More

While some 50 properties from the Manhattan Project remain, 44 of these properties were found to be contributing or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Specialists from the Environmental Stewardship group at LANL have surveyed and recommended 10 of these properties for possible preservation. These sites best represent properties where the design, assembly, and testing was done for the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos. As such, these sites are significant structures in the interpretation of our nuclear history.

The High Bay Building, located at V Site (TA-16), was where the plutonium-based bomb was assembled. In recognition of its significance, the V-Site properties received a Save America's Treasures grant in 1999. While the site will not be available to the public for the foreseeable future, the nearby Concrete Bowl will be preserved as a testament to how uncertain the project leaders were about their success in building the first atomic bomb.

The Little Boy site was used to test aspects of the uranium-based bomb dropped on Hiroshima. While the site is currently inside a secured area, within the next few years the Little Boy site may be regularly open to the public as an interpretive center for the Manhattan Project. In the meantime, the Laboratory may restore the 3,000-square-foot space for use as a conference facility for employees.

Among the other properties proposed for preservation is the Quonset hut where the Fat Man, a plutonium-core bomb dropped over Nagasaki, was tested and assembled. The Louis Slotin Accident Building is important to interpret Louis Slotin's criticality experiments that brought greater appreciation for the real dangers of radiation and the advent of safety procedures after his death.