President George W. Bush signed legislation in 2004 for the National Park Service to investigate whether the Manhattan Project should become a National Park Service unit, and after more than a decade of research and community input, President Barack Obama established the park in 2015. Jointly run by the National Park Service and Department of Energy, the non-contiguous park includes sites in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico, preserving portions of the World War II-era places where the United States developed the world's first atomic weapons. In Los Alamos, the park sites within the community and surrounding area are also non-contiguous because of the nature of the science explored during the Manhattan Project, including explosives work, and because of the mesas and canyons of the Los Alamos landscape. In and around Los Alamos, surviving places include a rare World War II-era dormitory, a former cafeteria for Manhattan Project personnel now used as a Performing Arts Center, Kwage Mesa overlooking the site of important radiological work, and areas at the still-active Los Alamos National Laboratory where scientists and technicians worked frantically to end World War II.

Photo: James Hulse

Photo: James Hulse

Photo: James Hulse

Los Alamos, New Mexico · USA