Five Eras of History

Five Eras of History. Los Alamos Historical Walking Tour. A thousand years ago, the first peoples on the Pajarito Plateau were hunter-gatherers who sought game and piñon nuts, along with obsidian from the nearby Valles Caldera. Beginning in the 1200s, the Ancestral Pueblo people began settling the area, building small home sites and eventually large pueblos scattered across the plateau. They farmed in the canyons and on the mesa tops, raised turkeys, and continued to hunt game. By the 1500s, drought, overpopulation, and depleted soils drove the Ancestral Puebloans to the Rio Grande Valley. For three hundred years, Indigenous American and Spanish settlers used the plateau for grazing livestock, gathering firewood, and raising a few crops. The land was under Spanish rule until Mexico declared independence in 1821. New Mexico became a territory of the United States after the Mexican-American war in 1847. In the 1880s, the land was opened for settlement under the Homestead Act. Mostly Hispano farmers from the Rio Grande Valley took advantage of the opportunity, supplementing their valley farms with beans, wheat, and other crops grown in the cooler environment. The homestead of H.H. Brook became the foundation for the Los Alamos Ranch School. This prestigious prep school provided young men with a top-notch education, as well as outdoor recreational Boy Scout activities, which were part of the curriculum., In late 1942, 58,000 acres, most of it already owned by the U.S. Forest Service, was taken over by the Army for a top-secret wartime mission-the Manhattan Project. The homesteaders and Ranch School lost their land, and the plateau became a fenced-in beehive of activity with scientists, technicians, and engineers racing to develop the world's first atomic bombs and bring a swift end to World War II (world war two)., After world war two, many residents rushed to return to their pre-war lives. Some, though, realized that research and development into nuclear science must continue. Today the Laboratory is a world-class center for scientific research in everything from supercomputing to astrophysics to climate science. The highly educated local talent fosters a community with good schools, and a safe, small-town atmosphere., Below left: Sixties-era vehicles cross Los Alamos Canyon via the LA bridge, also known as the Omega bridge, to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory; Below right: A woman and her child shopping for groceries in Los Alamos, circa 1940s, photos coutery LAN), Right top to bottom: Cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Monument in 1945; Raman Duran Homestead, circa 1942 (photo courtesy LANI); Farming was a part of the Los Alamos Ranch School curriculum in its earliest days, circa 1917; Los Alamos Ranch School gate with Fuller Lodge in the background, circa late 1920s. (photos courtesy Los Alamos Historical Society), Pick up a copy of the Historical Walking Tour Guide at the Los Alamos History Museum, Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos Nature Center, any of the Visitor Centers, or one of the visitor guide kiosks around town. Download one by scanning the QR code, or go to visitlosalamos.org.