Besides the Hanford Site, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park (www.nps.gov/mapr) includes two locations that are owned and operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Los Alamos, N.M., site (www.nps.gov/mapr/losalamos.htm), which sits on a plateau 33 miles northwest of Santa Fe, includes three main areas within Los Alamos National Laboratory. At the Gun Site several buildings are associated with the design of the "Little Boy" bomb dropped in August 1945 on Hiroshima, Japan. At the V-Site two buildings were used in assembly of the Trinity Test bomb detonated in New Mexico in July 1945. The Pajarito Site was used for plutonium chemistry research during World War II, then weapon assembly in postwar years. No tours are offered, and there's no public access to Energy Department facilities. The neighboring town of Los Alamos includes the Bradbury Science Museum (www.lanl.gov/museum), which tells the history of the laboratory and the Manhattan Project. Atomic history also is a dominant feature of Los Alamos walking tours (www.visitlosalamos.org/historic-walking-tour). Also in New Mexico but not included in the Manhattan Project park are the Army-controlled White Sands Missile Range (which includes the Trinity Test site, open to the public twice yearly; www.lat.ms/1MDYyPz ); and the adjacent White Sands National Monument, www.lat.ms/1WwjXwh.
The Oak Ridge, Tenn., site (www.nps.gov/mapr/oakridge.htm), a city and industrial complex 25 miles west of Knoxville, was home to more than 75,000 people. Locations there include Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the X-10 Graphite Reactor (which produced small amounts of plutonium), the Y-12 Complex (home to the electromagnetic separate process for uranium enrichment) and the site of the K-25 Building (where gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment technology was pioneered). Uranium for the Hiroshima bomb was enriched in the Y-12 Complex and K-25 Building. Those sites are included on a DOE bus tour (open to U.S. citizens only) that's offered March through November, two to five days a week. The tour is included in the $5-per-adult entrance fee to Oak Ridge's American Museum of Science & Energy (amse.org). Since early this year park service rangers have been answering questions at the museum.
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