On a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a Christmas visit with my brother, I knew it was unlikely that we would find the time to visit Los Alamos. The round-trip drive from Albuquerque to Los Alamos and back didn’t seem feasible when the goal was to spend quality family time. Due to unpredictable winter weather in the mountains and the partial government shutdown affecting the National Park Service, visiting an unstaffed Los Alamos became less enticing. Then, the first blizzard in 80 years struck Albuquerque late on Christmas Day, and a massive internet outage in the western part of the United States put a trip to Los Alamos firmly on the list for the next time.

New Englanders, like me, might sneer at a mere 4.5 inches of snow, but Albuquerque, a city of 550,000, is prepared to major roads but they do not plow residential streets. The city shuts down when there is snow. Stores, restaurants, and museums did not open since folks couldn’t get to work. When my brother cleared his deck with a dustpan, we learned that most people didn’t own a snow shovel. We heard that the airport relied on being shoveled out and closed when the icy, windy runways made landing and taking off impossible. The highway north of Albuquerque, the road that would take us to Santa Fe and then Los Alamos, also closed. The evening after the storm, we found a nearby restaurant open, which was very crowded. As we were leaving, the skeleton staff at the restaurant announced that they were closing because they had run out of clean dishes. The cook, bartender, waiter, and busboy were put to work taking orders, which wasn’t enough to handle the hungry crowd and take care of the dishes.

We agreed that a train trip to Santa Fe was in order the day after the storm. The day after the storm, it was about 20 degrees. The bright sun in this dry climate turned the snow to slush, which evaporated quickly. Anticipating only a few people on the train with us, we were surprised to find a multitude of tourists and day-trippers, along with those intrepid folks who had left their cars in or near Santa Fe when the highway closed. They had continued to Albuquerque by train and were now heading back to retrieve their vehicles from the various stops along the way. It was a fun, though crowded, ride.

Santa Fe, higher in altitude and more, well, different than Albuquerque, meant lower temperatures, streets full of tourists, and vendors occupying the dry spaces under the verandahs in front of each building around the main square. We planned to do some touristy things, shop, have lunch, and head back. The Governor’s Palace, the oldest, continually operating government building in the United States, was closed for renovations, so that was an exterior-only view; the Basilica was worth the climb up and down the icy stone steps as long as you had a firm grip on the wrought iron railings; and the many, many shops that sold jewelry, western clothing and hats, were fun but you need only so much jewelry, western clothing and hats. Santa Fe had more snow, and the slush was deeper than in Albuquerque. After the touristy things and a quick lunch, we headed to the New Mexico History Museum to warm up, dry off and see what was on exhibit. While perusing the gift store merchandise, I noticed Jennet Conant’s  109 East Palace[1] book in a place of prominence. My gaze expanded to take in the other books on the table, and I found almost all the books were about the Manhattan Project. The featured exhibit was Atomic Histories: Remembering New Mexico’s Nuclear Past[2]. Our random decision to visit the museum became an unexpected must-see.

We split up, each to take in a different exhibit of interest. I headed for the Atomic Histories and learned about the 109 East Palace address, the Santa Fe address used by the Manhattan Project for the secret city of Los Alamos. The other secret project city, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, similarly used PO Boxes and Knoxville, TN offices for official addresses. While Oak Ridge used several addresses, Los Alamos, which had fewer people but was critical, used only one. The Governor’s Palace is connected to the museum, both of which face Palace Road, and Palace Road is one of the four streets bordering Santa Fe’s main square. Therefore, the Los Alamos Manhattan Project office at 109 East Palace Road was nearby.

We ran outside around the corner to Palace Road and down the street, dodging tourists and vendors, to East Palace Road. We found a nondescript sign in an arched doorway indicating that the office was located across the small, snow-covered plaza. A slippery sprint across the plaza brought us to a wire fence. Through the fencing, we viewed a slightly larger brass plaque that officially designates this small, somewhat hidden former Manhattan Project office. The fencing may be due to the rehabilitation work being done on the Palace, or it may be to keep tourists away from the existing business occupying the building, but there is no one around to ask. Excited to find this important Manhattan Project detail in such an unexpected and unheralded place, we took pictures of the historical marker through the fencing and then raced, as quickly as the now icy streets would allow, to catch the train back to Albuquerque.

This discovery enhanced my research on my grandfather’s role in that project and provided some insight into the meaning of the title of the 109 East Palace book. The author, Jennet Conant, is the granddaughter of James Conant, one of the senior scientists working on the Manhattan Project while he was President of Harvard College and a leading figure in the development of the Atomic Bomb.

^[1] Conant, Jennet. 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. Simon & Schuster, 2005.

^[2] New Mexico History Museum