April 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

Artifacts, structures, and sites … oh my!

Employee helps protect local historic treasures

For someone who only planned to be in Los Alamos for a couple of years, Ellen McGehee has stayed a long time—24 years. Yet, her stint at the Laboratory is barely a blink in time compared to the archaeological and historical sites and structures she tends as part of her job.

Ellen McGehee inspects a horno (a beehive-shaped outdoor oven) during a site survey of the Gomez homestead (circa 1899 to 1942), one of several on Lab property that were taken over by the federal government for the Manhattan Project. Photos by Kari Garcia

"I came to the Lab in 1984 to work on the excavation and relocation of the Romero Cabin, one of the homestead structures that was on Laboratory property," said McGehee. "I was planning to spend a couple of years on that project and then go to graduate school. But two years and a few decades later, I am still here."

Although, McGehee eventually went on to earn a master's degree in history from the University of New Mexico while working at the Laboratory, she still considers herself an archaeologist. The Cultural Resources Team leader in Ecology and Air Quality, McGehee has spent much of her time on the job surveying, excavating, documenting, and cataloging the history, artifacts, and structures that can be found across the Laboratory. It is a history that spans more than 10,000 years.

"We have a diversity of sites on the Pajarito Plateau that we manage and by law have to protect," said McGehee. "These include archaeological sites and historic buildings on Lab property dating from the Archaic and prehistoric periods to the Cold War, anything from 10,000 years ago to the early 1990s."

The work that McGehee and her team have been involved in includes managing numerous prehistoric Native American sites that dot the plateau, such as cave dwellings and ancient pueblo communities similar to those in Bandelier National Monument. The Laboratory team works with various stakeholders, including area pueblos, government, and historical groups to make sure artifacts and structures on the sites are protected and respected.

"Fortunately, because the Lab has been here so long, the artifacts and sites have been well protected," said McGehee.

Her team also has worked on stabilizing and restoring some significant sites that originally were part of the Manhattan Project effort to build the atomic bomb. One example would be the award-winning restoration of V Site, a cluster of wooden buildings built in 1944 and considered the birthplace of the "Gadget," the atomic device detonated at Trinity Site in Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.

McGehee surveys an old dump site as part of the post-fire documentation of archaeological sites on Laboratory property shortly after the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000.

Summarizing her tenure at the Laboratory, McGehee said, "In all the years I've been working here, I've never been bored. Part of the excitement of my job is the knowledge that the cultural resources at the Lab hold tremendous significance, not only for area pueblos and other nearby communities, but for the American people and the world community at large."

-Ed Vigil