New Park Marks Development Site Of Bombs Dropped On Hiroshima And Nagasaki

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee addresses a gathering of park supporters and the news media at the South Interior Building in downtown Washington, D.C., on November 10, 2015, where Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz signed a memorandum of agreement which created the 409th park in the National Park System, The Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Hanford tourism officials have hoped the national park label will draw thousands more to the desert site.

Oak Ridge is marking the establishment of the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park with two events on Thursday. The park will have three locations in Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and in Oak Ridge.

Curiously, the nation’s nuclear weapons sites sit cheek-by-jowl with natural attractions. They picketed Vice President Al Gore at the dedication.

Residents of a once secret government city in northern New Mexico marked the beginnings of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park with the opening of a new visitor center.

The Obama administration is establishing a series of national park sites recognizing the Manhattan Project. The park was authorized by Congress in December 2014.

“Through the preservation and interpretation of the Manhattan Project, the National Park Service will share with the world the story of one of America’s most transformative scientific discoveries that fundamentally altered the course of the 20th Century”, Jewell said in a statement. The B Reactor has been a national historic landmark since 2008.

The signing ceremony in Washington, D.C., will be witnessed by Sens. The Hanford site was used to develop the plutonium dropped days later on Nagasaki, and Los Alamos is where more than 6,000 scientists, engineers and other workers designed and built the atomic bombs.

The Manhattan Project lasted between 1939 and 1945 and culminated with the first nuclear test ever conducted, about 180 miles south of Los Alamos at the White Sands Missile Range in July 1945.

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