Hidden in Plain Sight - A Historic Atomic Marker in Santa Fe New Mexico
Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 3:56PM | in New Mexico, Travel We only drove about 55 miles today. After having breakfast in the arts district in Albuquerque New Mexico, we decided to visit Santa Fe. I have wanted to visit for a while but especially so after reading a fascinating book called 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos.
Today in the courtyard patio of 109 East Palace visitors will find colorful ceramic lizards, chilies, frogs and dragonflies for sale.
Attached to the back wall is a small historic plaque.
With only a small sign that indicates a historical marker can be seen in the patio, the overwhelming majority of tourists miss it.
They pass by unaware that in the 1940's physics luminary's like Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi and Richard Feynman passed through this patio, often bringing their families with them. Each had received secret orders to report to 109 East Palace, Santa Fe New Mexico. They were tired, often having endured long journeys by train to this desolate desert city located high in the mountains at 7,199 feet of elevation.
When they arrived, they were met by Dorothy McKibbin a widow who had originally come to the New Mexico desert hoping to be cured of tuberculosis. After she recovered, she was offered a job by none other than Robert Oppenheimer, a professor from the University of California at Berkeley. Dorothy ran the secret Manhattan Project office in Santa Fe.
She would arrange for temporary lodging (often at the La Fonda Hotel), food, luggage storage and the security passes required for the physicists to travel to Los Alamos, the secret research facility located on top of a mesa where the worlds first atomic weapons were being designed and built. After a good nights rest, the physicists and their families were loaded onto busses for the 35 mile drive up the rutted and unpaved road to the Los Alamos facility. Once they saw their very basic accommodations on top of the mesa, most yearned to return to the luxurious La Fonda in Santa Fe.
The history of 109 East Palace stretches back to 1939. In that year, Albert Einstein was persuaded to write a letter to then President Franklin Roosevelt, warning him that that in Germany the Nazi's were very close to developing their own atomic weapons. Einstein also understood that the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe was developing a long range bomber to deliver their atomic bomb to the US mainland. He strongly felt that the United States had to develop an atomic weapon first. In 1943 Oppenheimer established the Santa Fe office and the quest to develop the weapons had begun. Although the work was being carried out in the greatest secrecy, the Manhattan Project had several spies working inside the lab. They were dedicated to leaking information to the Soviet Union. Russian agents were meeting with these spies in Santa Fe restaurants, parks and even in the La Fonda Hotel.