Ice House Memorial

Ice House Memorial. Los Alamos Historic District Walking Tour. This memorial marks the site of the Los Alamos Ranch School Ice House, used to store blocks cut from Ashley Pond when winter ice grew to a foot thickness. The original building was made of logs. In the mid-1920s, a stone building replaced the wooden structure. Because of the building's cool interior, technicians assembled the core of "the gadget," the test plutonium bomb, here during the Manhattan Project. Then the core was transported 200 miles south to the Trinity Test Site., In the early 1950s, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (now Los Alamos National Laboratory) opened a museum in this location dedicated to preserving the history of the Lab. The building was razed in 1957, but in 1966 a memorial was resurrected, combining the log and stone styles of the previous buildings. Some of the original stone was used in the process., Below: Technical Area 1 (TA-1), located around Ashley Pond, where the Ice House was originally located and the gadget was assembled. Right top to bottom: Cutting ice at Ashley Pond, circa 1920s; Loading ice into the original log Ice House, circa 1920s; The Ice House, circa 1950s. (photos courtesy LA 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.