Kendra Ruminer's Two Cents of Real Estate

I think when I look at photos of the original Fuller Lodge design and compare it with the building I know and love today, it’s sometimes difficult to identify exactly how it changed. Then I take a look at the picture below and pretty much have my “holy cow!” moment.

If you’ve read any of my other posts regarding architecture in Los Alamos in the post war era, you’ve likely read the name W.C. Kruger and Associates. They worked with the Atomic Energy Commission many times on buildings in Los Alamos and are responsible for designing many of the homes we still have in town today.

The Zia Company took over management and operations of Fuller Lodge in 1947. The plan was still to utilize the lodge as a hotel because it was the only building that could actually pull that off in 1947. The major difficulty was trying to maintain the rustic charm of AJ Connell’s “outpost of civilization” while accommodating the AEC’s purely functional desires. While we look at the lodge today and aren’t particularly shocked. The decision to add onto the lodge in three directions utilizing native stone was met with quite a lot of disapproval from the locals at the time.

Going from the above look of Fuller Lodge to the one below was quite a change. The biggest change being that the front of the lodge became the back and the back became the front. All because of CARS.

In an effort to “match” the new with the old, native stone was used in order to complement the existing rock of the fireplaces and chimneys inside the lodge. Guest rooms were crammed into the new wings added to the north and south ends of the building. This allowed the lodge to host 75 guests at a time!

The south wing got 14 new rooms which included a two room suite with a private sitting room. The first floor of the north wing became the home of the “modern” lobby which used the back of the original fireplace. The first floor of the north wing also gained a manager’s office, a receiving office, and even a barbershop! With seven rooms upstairs in the north wing, they also added two small suites which eventually became the Nambe Room.

Of course, the kitchen needed a real overhaul in spite of it’s ability to turn out a top notch steak dinner all throughout the war years. The new kitchen completely overtook the old stone one on the west side of the building. They also made rooms for storage and even a bedroom for hotel employees. Above the new kitchen were six additional guest rooms which had been packed in and were therefore pretty small.

The original building was still the heart of the hotel. The Curtis and Zia Rooms became banquet halls and the original dining room got new and more comfortable chairs to replace the old slatted ones seen in the photo below.

The whole structure was rechristened “The Lodge”, which you can see scrawled down the chimney in the photo showcasing the fancy new parking lot entrance. It opened in early 1949 and the Zia Company named R.E. Carraway as the new manager.

Staying at The Lodge would cost you $7 per night for a single room or $9.50 for a double. As you might imagine, the first thing guests complained about was the lack of a cocktail lounge. Not long after opening, the AEC gave permission for the Curtis Room to be renovated into a cozy bar.

The Zia Company operated The Lodge until 1966. When the whole town began going through phases of privatization, the AEC authorized the construction of the Los Alamos Inn around 1966. The agreement was that The Lodge would be closed within 10 days of the new Inn being open for operation. The purpose was to cut down on competition. I think many of us now wish The Lodge was still a hotel considering we often have a great need locally for short term housing!

The AEC first thought to tear the building down, but a local movement to Save the Lodge gained momentum almost immediately. Locals were keen to prevent Fuller Lodge from meeting the same fate as The Big House, (which you can read about HERE). The AEC decided to give Los Alamos County a one year contract to operate the Lodge as a cultural center and museum. The first public event held at Fuller Lodge happened on August 26, 1967 when the Los Alamos County Fair was hosted at Fuller Lodge for the first time. Though the whole thing was considered a huge success, it took the AEC until October 24, 1974 to navigate the red tape and transfer ownership of Fuller Lodge to Los Alamos County.

Today, Fuller Lodge could be called the Heart of Los Alamos. It’s rooms host events, conferences, historical talks, music exhibitions, and even the annual Pumpkin Glow happens on the lawn! The building has been renovated yet again to make space for the Los Alamos Art Center and gallery, the Los Alamos Historical Archives, and offices for the Los Alamos Historical Society and the Los Alamos Arts Council. The Pajarito Room still hosts everything from lectures to weddings and a good number of us have had our senior photos taken somewhere on Fuller Lodge Property. It’s a piece of our history that should be cherished and loved. I sometimes think that AJ Connell would be pleased with how it’s turned out. One might even argue that Los Alamos itself has become an Outpost of Civilization!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour through the history of Fuller Lodge. The building fascinates me just as much as the rest of the rustic architecture of Bathtub Row. Whether you’re itching to purchase a historic home or a regular home here in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’m a hometown girl who loves to talk about life in Los Alamos!

When General Leslie Groves and Robert J Oppenheimer made their choice regarding potential sites for Project Y, Groves considered Fuller Lodge to be a bonus to the Los Alamos Ranch School’s desirability as a location. According to Craig Martin and Heather McClenahan’s book, “Of Logs and Stone”, Groves considered Fuller Lodge “immediately ready for use as ‘transient housing and messing of post and technical personnel”.

I had a good chuckle at the wording. “Messing” of post and technical personnel? In the military lingo, “messing” refers to feeding. And apparently Fuller Lodge was averaging 13,000 meals served each month during the Project Y years! If you lived or stayed in the Lodge or the Big House, you ate your meals at Fuller Lodge. However, if you wanted to show up for a steak on a Friday night at Fuller Lodge, you paid just a dollar per person for your dinner.

That’s right. It seems like a deal worthy of a casino buffet, but a full meal ticket covering 3 square meals per day was $60/mo. Breakfast was $.50; Lunch was $.65; and dinner would cost you a dollar no matter what they were serving. As you might imagine, a lot of Project Y personnel lined up when the lodge was serving their steak dinner, (something Eleanor Jette speaks about in her book, Inside Box 1663).

The most distinguished guests in Los Alamos were billeted at Fuller Lodge during their stays, and if you were a bachelor you were likely to be at the Lodge or the Big House. Considering the necessity of feeding both guests and the science guy bachelor population, local legend suggests Fuller Lodge was often hosting at least six past and future Nobel Prize laureates at a time for meals. Apparently Otto Frisch of the British Mission loved to eat breakfast at Fuller Lodge just to watch the sun come up over the Sangre de Cristos.

Of course, that wasn’t the only thing going on at Fuller Lodge during Project Y. The Pajarito Room saw just as many dances, gatherings, celebrations, and public meetings as it did during the Ranch School years! Even the Town Council used the Pajarito Room as their chambers during some evenings.

Enrico Fermi allegedly square danced one evening at Fuller Lodge and could not be convinced to join the dance until he had memorized with mathematical precision every one of the moves he would need to perform. Can you imagine trying to square dance with a boatload of mathematically gifted individuals obsessed with the geometrical “correctness” of the movements? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall on those nights! While our brains probably cannot see a night of square dancing as “trendy” and “exciting”, the square dance was to turn of the century America what the Minuet was to Regency England. All the rage! And sincerely a better way to get to know a potential new friend than a bunch of instant messages from a dating app…

The Army didn’t modify Fuller Lodge very much during the Project Y years. The biggest renovation was to create guest quarters where the infirmary had been. The post commander requested sleeping and bathing areas in the space. The most interesting feature of this upgrade was a quirk in the plumbing which required the toilet to be in a rather peculiar position. Guests had to actually step up to the toilet, which was located on a platform. This particular accommodation eventually became known as “The Throne Room”. The picture below shows exactly why, and the sign was for laughs as it would be unusual for anyone to suggest a meeting in the bathroom!

Happy 2025 Los Alamos! Take a drive by Ashley Pond and Fuller Lodge while the wonderful holiday lights are still lit up in the evenings and enjoy this amazing landmark of the Pajarito Plateau. And when you’re ready to buy or sell your property here in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’m a hometown girl who would love to chat about living in Los Alamos with YOU!

Once Fuller Lodge was completed and the ranch school “moved in”, AJ Connell was able to indulge in what was almost a fantasy of rough outdoor living combined with an elegant evening schedule of dressing for dinner and an almost Oxford like “high table” manner. Connell was quoted more than once in saying The Los Alamos Ranch School was meant to be an “Outpost of Civilization”. Fuller Lodge was the pinnacle of that outpost in the mind of Connell and many of the school masters.

It isn’t difficult to see why they’d think that. Keep in mind that what we currently tend to think of as the “front” of Fuller Lodge was originally the back. The wide porch which faces the rose garden, the sweeping lawn, and unfortunately the back of the post office, was the “front” of Fuller Lodge. As viewed in the photo below, it was a gorgeous facade back in the day. Without the barrier of Central Park Square, the east facing portico of Fuller Lodge provided an unfettered view of the sunrise over the Sangre de Cristos. If you stand on the lawn nowand close your eyes you’d still probably have a tough time imagining acres worth of irrigated fields stretching from Fuller Lodge toward the edge of the mesa as far as the eye could see.

While it is still striking, it’s hard for a modern mind to imagine an entire troop of mounted boy scouts pulling up their horses on the road in front of the portico to strut their stuff for graduation day!

Evenings began with the bell perched atop the roof calling the boys and the masters for the evening meal. With clean faces and pressed uniforms, the boys would gather in front of the stone fireplace in the anteroom. There they could read or chat as they waited for the houseboys, (yes, Connell hired young boys from the surrounding pueblos to perform this role) to open the big sliding doors between the anteroom and the dining hall. When the doors opened, the boys would calmly and with decorum (always, I’m sure!) go to their assigned tables. Each table of 8 boys was presided over by a master who was also in charge of the conversation topics. Let’s say the table conversation was probably NOT what you’d usually expect of grade school boys.

There was considerable worry about kitchen fires in log cabin structures. With an eye toward safety, the kitchen at Fuller Lodge was located just off the dining hall in a stone structure which can be seen in this rear view below. That wasn’t an uncommon way of handling kitchens in general until sometime in the late 1900s.

When the dining hall wasn’t being used for meals three times each day of the week, the staff would stash tables and chairs in the surrounding rooms and host other events. The LARS band often played and Connell would invite girls from other schools in Santa Fe to come up and give his rough riding boy scouts experience in the finer points of dancing, conversation, and probably even flirtation!

The photo below of a Valentines Day dance in the Pajarito Room (as the dining room has always been called) shows the original enormous elk head which used to hang above the big fireplace. I’ve always found it amusing that the elk head eventually got moved at the request of the housekeeper who apparently found it near impossible to keep the moths from setting up house inside the thing! You can read more about the girls’ school in Santa Fe in a previous post HERE.

One of the coolest offerings at Fuller Lodge was the frequency of theater productions. In fact, the founder of the Santa Fe Opera made his theatrical debut here in Los Alamos on the stage at Fuller Lodge in 1940. John Crosby performed admirably, by all reports, in H.M.S. Pinafore! Seriously, sometimes we are just so trendy without realizing it. After all, years later Oppenheimer performed with the Los Alamos Little Theater in one of their wartime era productions. I suppose this is only a taste of what AJ Connell envisioned as life on the Pajarito Plateau being the cradle of civilized entertainment and pursuits in Northern New Mexico!

Another interesting piece of the original Fuller Lodge layout was a room just adjacent to the entry hall. The bright space has gone by several names over the decades, but it’s original name was the “Smoking Room”. Believe it or not, ranch school students were allowed to smoke as long as they observed a few rules.

1. Smokers had to be a minimum of 17 years of age.
2. Parents had to give written permission verifying the student was allowed to smoke.
3. Smoking would be allowed only after meals.
4. Smoking should NEVER be done in front of younger boys, (presumably younger than 17), who were not allowed inside the smoking room to begin with.

The name of the Smoking Room was eventually changed to the “Sportsmen’s Room” as it was the official meeting space for the Angler’s and Shooting Clubs. Then Connell finally named the room after Fayette Curtis who was the first teacher and headmaster of the ranch school.

The second floor of the lodge was more of a mezzanine style because the Pajarito Room was two stories. The headmaster and the school matron both had suites on the second floor. The school nurse had a small suite up there and the school infirmary was located in a room above the main lobby at the north end of the building which is now referred to as the “Throne Room”, (more about THAT next time!).

Connell had a sitting room and sleeping quarters on the north end of the third floor of Fuller Lodge. This third floor location offered Connell incredible views of the countryside through the windows, but during the hottest months he would sometimes occupy one of the seasonally vacant master’s quarters in order to avoid sweltering in the summer heat! Can you imagine being up on the third floor at night with no air conditioning or electric fans? Yikes!

The bell of Fuller Lodge was made by the Meneely Bell Company of Troy, New York. The bell pull dropped down from the bell tower on the roof to a spot just outside the kitchen. When it was time to summon the boys for meals, one of the kitchen staff would just reach over the pull the braided cord. It seems sort of sad that this outpost of civilization and such a unique experience for growing up young men only lasted 14 years before a whole new outfit came to Los Alamos.

As we come to the end of the ranch school days at Fuller Lodge, I encourage you to take a walk around Ashley Pond to enjoy the beautiful lights. Then have a look at Fuller Lodge and imagine it filled with holiday gatherings and excitement. Then you might want to take a moment and be amazed that Fuller Lodge has seen around 97 holiday seasons. And when you’re pausing to appreciate the beauty of the first homes in Los Alamos, give me a call! I love chatting about the unique and sometimes quirky homes here in Los Alamos. It’s even better when I can help folks find their dream home here on the Pajarito Plateau!

Happy Holidays, Los Alamos!

I always find the holidays to a be the perfect time to wax poetic about Fuller Lodge. I think this painting by Secundino Sandoval helps illustrate why. The lodge just looks cool in snow, and it’s even better lit up for Christmas!

I think the first question most of us wonder is why Fuller Lodge? Why not Connell Lodge, or Pond Lodge (except that sounds a bit odd), or even Pajarito Lodge? The short answer is that the Fuller family provided most of the funds needed to build the lodge. They also heavily supported the school when Ashley Pond’s circumstances were such that he no longer could. Philo Fuller, Edward P Fuller’s father, wholeheartedly took on the role of primary shareholder and supporter.

Edward P Fuller died in 1923. He’d first come to Los Alamos in 1917 as a guest of Ashley Pond at the Pajarito Club when the school was still a guest ranch. Edward had struggled with Polio for most of his life and the climate in New Mexico agreed with him far more than that of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Fuller’s family had made their fortune in furniture manufacturing. Philo had been glad his son found so much satisfaction in healthy living and being on horseback for most of each day. While Edward wasn’t healthy enough to do physical labor and struggled with physical movement, he was fond of horses and was highly proficient in the saddle. He also proved to have a good way with the younger boys and became both supervisor and father figure to the youngest students so far away from home.

I think a modern mindset looks at Fuller Lodge and feels like it belongs to Los Alamos, as though it’s always been here and always will be here. But in the beginning, Connell had to argue pretty hard for the need to build such an enormous structure. He had issues with the mortgage holder, but once he slogged through the legal issues and got the go ahead from Philo Fuller, the next step was to find an architect.

Connell consulted Hazel Pond, who immediately recommended John Gaw Geem. The Brazilian born architect had a civil engineering degree from the Virginia Military Institute and had a passion for New Mexico that he brought with him to his designs. Meem’s detailed plans for the lodge included the bell tower, designs for the lamps which would be needed in the portico, and even the specific dimensions for all 771 logs needed to complete the building!

Can you imagine? 771 logs. Each log specifically hewn to fit in precise order. Connell and Meem gained permission from the Forest Service to cut logs and quarry stone from the Jemez Mountains. The stonework at Fuller Lodge is actually made from the lightweight Bandelier tuff we see so frequently in our region.

Connell and a representative from the Santa Fe National Forest spent a good deal of time in the foothills west of the school choosing each tree. I find it so interesting that Connell actually made a habit of unmarking certain trees like a sort of Robin Hood of the forest because he felt the trees were necessary to the landscape and aesthetic of the school. So if the forest ranger marked a tree for use that Connell disagreed with, Connell would sneak out after dark and unmark it so he could choose one he thought was a better fit!

Trees were felled in the summer of 1927 and a sawmill of sorts was set up on the school property in order to get the building materials ready for the lodge construction.

I find these images of the construction absolutely fascinating. These photos and more are available for you to have in Craig Martin and Heather McClenahan’s book, Of Logs and Stone, which you can pick up at the History Museum shop. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of this book for your collection if you have any interest in the history of our area.

Later in 1927, Connell received a message from a man named George Teats. Teats was a contractor in Rocky Ford, Colorado. His crew had just completed a recreation hall at the Conejos Recreation Association and had experience with the construction of log structures. Meem went to check out Teats recently completed project and declared this to be a good match for Connell’s vision. In May of 1928, Teats and his crew moved to the Pajarito Plateau and that’s when things took off!

Meem periodically visited the site to make adjustments to design and methods. He seemed especially concerned with the interior. Meem even had several of the logs sawn in half and hollowed out to create recessed areas for conduits and other piping and structural necessities.

Construction was completed in 1929. Teats sent a bill to Meem for $33,450.00. Meem paid the bill and added a 5% fee to cover his firm’s costs for planning, engineering, and supervision. The total bill from Meem was $1600.00. Which means Fuller Lodge “cost” under $35K to build, though I cannot imagine what materials would have cost then and now. The fact that the school could draw materials from the surrounding land is probably the only reason we now have a beautiful public facility which is still in use almost a hundred years later!

The construction of Fuller Lodge was truly a labor of love. While John Gaw Meem didn’t make a ton of cash off the deal, the lodge became a hallmark of his style and capabilities and really boosted his career in architecture. The building perfectly blended AJ Connell’s vision of a rustic school which excelled at developing intelligent, academically gifted outdoorsmen. Classical education meets rustic living at it’s finest! And of course, Fuller Lodge continues to be a symbol of our history here in Los Alamos. We’ll talk a bit more about the Lodge through the years in the next few weeks. What other “house” in Los Alamos deserves such a special place in our holiday season?

If you’re ready to find your holiday dream house here in Los Alamos, give me a call! I love it when fall shifts to winter, the mornings are brisk and cold, and the nights are perfect for hanging out in front of the fire or the woodstove. So while your chestnuts are roasting, give me a shout! I’d love to talk real estate in Los Alamos with you!

I hope everyone is getting ready for a relaxing Thanksgiving full of food and family! Or… if you prefer a quiet holiday spent doing something solitary that you enjoy, I hope you do that with just as much enthusiasm. This has always been a wonderful place to gather, but sometimes one of the coolest part of being local is how quiet Los Alamos can be during holiday weekends. Even less traffic and big blue skies and outdoor activities galore! Our local ice skating rink is open and it’s certainly time to start enjoying the coming winter season.

In a previous post, I talked about a few silly stories from the ranch school days. As you might imagine, there are dozens and dozens of these anecdotes. But I wanted to share a couple of stories I’ve found in my reading from the Manhattan Project era. Some of them really show how time has passed without things changing as much as we believe they have!

Culture Club Woes

A persistent item of notice to practically every female who came to Los Alamos in the early days, (and honestly every female since!) is the lack of social amenities immediately available in town. In Eleanor Jette’s book, Inside Box 1663, she suggests, “Philosophy changed fast in our cloistered world, and the British wives agreed with the American wives that if you were in the soup, it was best to swim and not worry too much about the social amenities”.

But there was a Women’s Club here in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project era. In the beginning, the club was divided into sections. Two of the most active sections were the book section and the cultural arts section. Eleanor Jette goes on to say that while she opted out of the Women’s Club in general as she had had enough of them in the “Outer World” to last a lifetime, one could not get away from the cultural arts section. Eventually, the Cultural Arts Section became the entire Women’s Club!

As you might imagine, Lady Chadwick of the British Mission was the first to point out that the vegetable counter at the commissary had become far too crowded with the “newcomers” who would cluster about while meeting and greeting. It was decided that this was not a “toney” place for a woman newly arrived from the “Outer World” to make her debut to the Los Alamos social scene. In case you’ve not heard the term, it was a pretty common way in the past of referring to something marked by an aristocratic or high-toned manner or style. I’d imagine for someone like Lady Chadwick, there wasn’t much that felt “toney” in Los Alamos back in those days!

Therefore, it was decided that “newcomer teas” should happen frequently, overseen by Lady Chadwick and the mother of physicist, Joe Hirschfelder. Jette goes on to describe the teas as rather “frenzied” affairs because there were so very many newcomers that it was difficult to find a way to meet and greet them all in one go!

Eventually, the ladies decided to declare the Women’s Club to be the Cultural Arts Club. Unfortunately this name scared the poor woman they nominated for the presidency. Marge Schrieber actually described that role as “too vivid” for her comfort zone as it invoked the idea that she was somehow in charge of high culture in Los Alamos, (can you imagine?). So Marge suggested they call it the Mesa Club. Although, Marge’s first suggested name for the club was the “Hill Biddies”. I’d imagine that to be a fairly accurate description that made too many of the said ladies uncomfortable. If we consider all of the things we ask our County government to address in this day and age, I don’t think it could ever compare to how things were back in the 1940’s.

Where’s Your Pass?

Something else it’s difficult to imagine is needing your LANL pass for everything. Sure, if you’re a LANL employee you have a badge. You need that sucker to get through a gate, probably some more gates, some other doors, and probably your office space. You might need an access card for your work computer or when you take one home. But you don’t generally need your badge to get back into your house…

Just after the Manhattan Project took over the Ranch School, “Deak” and Martha Parsons moved into Master Cottage #3. Of course, Master Cottage #3 had been the home Fermor and Peggy Pond Church built to raise their boys. But Peggy had her little “mom’s getaway” cabin on the edge of Pueblo Canyon and had wandered the plateau, hiking and writing when the urge took her.

Martha Parsons experience of life in Master Cottage #3 was quite different from Peggy Church’s! It wasn’t unusual in those days for there to be armed guards outside all of the staff housing. Martha often spoke of disliking the need to hurry past the guards just to go to the library or the post office or even to the grocery store.

One day Martha slipped out to spend the afternoon visiting with a friend, but did so without realizing the guards stationed at the door when she returned were not the ones who’d been there when she left. She’d made a social visit and the poor woman had completely forgotten to take a pass with her. When she headed back home at the end of her social call, the guard wouldn’t let her back into her home! Martha had to ask her friend, Bernice Brode, to vouch for her. But it still took a lot of fast talking from the women to convince the guard to let Martha return to her own home!

22 Gun Salute!

It has often been said that the best party in Los Alamos happened not long after the Japanese surrender. As one might imagine, the night turned into a sea of drinks. Alcohol and explosives experts very rarely mix well, and the grand finale of the night happened after a dare was made to explosives expert George Kistiakowsky to arrange a 21 gun salute.

According to Craig Martin and Heather McClenahan, Kistiakowsky promptly retrieved twenty-one 50lb boxes of Composition B from the high explosives magazine. Kistiakowsky laid the boxes out in the field and used his electronic detonation skills to fire them off! “It was a very impressive performance,” Kistiakowsky stated later. “But when I got back to the party the bastards told me I fired 22 shots.”

So many things have changed here in Los Alamos over the last two decades. But I think a lot of us who grew up here remember situations just like that. Of using leftover equipment or materials for quirky and sometimes bizarre projects or celebrations or just for the heck of it! And if there was anywhere in the world where a 21 (or 22!) gun salute would’ve been appropriate that night, it was here in Los Alamos!

I hope you’ve enjoyed some of these strange and often silly short stories of early life on the Hill. Whether you want to found your own Culture Club or you feel like the Hill Biddies are more your style, I’d love to talk life in Los Alamos with you! And when you’re ready to find your own place to live and work here in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’m a local girl who loves Los Alamos and has a lifelong curiosity about our often unique housing options. So enjoy your Thanksgiving and let’s hope for a beautiful winter of fun here in Los Alamos County!

Snow days in Los Alamos always seem to create a need to reminisce about the past. Of course, my thoughts first turned to epic snow days of the past, which you can read about HERE. And then I started thinking about what life must’ve been like a long time ago here in Los Alamos when it snowed like crazy. The one population here in Los Alamos that was absolutely out this past snow day, driving around like crazy people on a snow/work from home/no school/sleep in day were the Los Alamos Stable Owners. No matter how much snow falls, they’ve been known to cross country ski out there to get the horses fed and watered on time.

That got me thinking about Los Alamos in the early days. How on earth did they plow their way out of there when the snowfall was even heavier on a regular basis?

Jim Womelsduff was one of a handful of Los Alamos Ranch School employees who were critical to the success and sustainability of the community on the Pajarito Plateau. You can read a bit more about Jim in a previous post about the Chief Mechanic’s House. Jim’s nephew, Richard E. Womelsduff, wrote about his uncle in his manuscript, “It Was a Good Time and Place to Be a Boy”, the entirety of which can be read in the Wirth and Aldrich book, Los Alamos: The Ranch School Years. Jim Womelsduff was mechanically inclined in all of the best ways.

It seems consistent with most descriptions of early winters at the ranch school, that snowfall was considerable. As we all know, there aren’t that many ways in and out of Los Alamos. But Jim Womelsduff was responsible for clearing the access roads in and out and also from building to building since many of them were pretty far flung. (Would YOU want too shovel your way from the intersection at Trinity and 20th Streets to Fuller Lodge?) For this purpose, Jim actually designed and built enormous snowplows which could be attached to the Caterpillar tractors, which Jim also kept running. And THAT is how the school kept itself alive in the winter!

Science Class at the Local Ruins

Richard Womelsduff goes on to tell another tale of life in early Los Alamos regarding the native ruins located near the Romero Cabin on 19th St where the road dead ends into a parking lot connected to Central Park Square.

“There were Indian ruins on Los Alamos mesa as well as most places on the Pajarito Plateau. A small ruin mound of about five hundred square feet was located just a few yards to the west of the Big House. It showed a dozen or so small rooms and was worked on from time to time by a science class of schoolboys.”

Can you imagine getting an anthropology or archeology or even a geology lesson where you actually got to dig into a mound and uncover ruins for yourself? Evidently there were several more nearby ruins that were utilized in history seeking expeditions during the boys’ free time. Womelsduff’s account goes on to say, “These ruins were so prevalent all over the area that they were accepted as a normal part of our environment, with little thought given to the people who had once lived and died there.” Oddly enough, this rather reminds me of the general level of appreciation most of us felt about a trip to Bandelier during elementary school. Just another part of life in Los Alamos. As an adult, I’ve come to realize what an incredible opportunity this is!

Six Gun School Play

Richard Womelsduff tells another laughable story about the introduction of a formal elementary school for the local children of ranch school employees. This occurred when AJ Connell hired Fred Rousseau as the LARS business manager. Fred and his wife, Edna, promptly moved into Master Cottage #1. Edna took up a position as the elementary school teacher.

Richard does remember the bonus of a new grade school was that the old grade school building became the home of a horse wrangler named Ted Mather. Ted must’ve been like a character from a book or a tall tale to the young boys of the ranch school. The man came complete with a bow legged walk, a huge moustache, and a six gun that he actually wore strapped to his waist when out and about.

Richard was very pleased that Ted allowed him to borrow the gun, without bullets of course, for his part in the school play. Certainly any kiddo who grew up playing mountain man running about the wilds of early Los Alamos would love a chance to wave a six gun around as he acted in a school play. And perhaps nothing draws a more glaring line between the “good old days” and the here and now. Though I am reminded that our Los Alamos High School has a talented group of young trap and sporting clay shooters who participate in the “Young Guns” Club. It’s even a co-ed group that competes all over the state!

As we gear up for another winter here in Los Alamos and wonder what on Earth happened to autumn, let’s be happy we have things like teleworking, snow plows, central heat and modern wood, gas, and pellet stoves. At least when our fireplace is crackling merrily and we’re curled up in front of our favorite binge watching television, we aren’t usually worried about choking on smoke or having to run out to the forest to chop more wood!

There are so many more funny little tidbit tales about early life in Los Alamos. We’ll have to take a trip through the “Culture Club” era soon. And when you’re ready to find your perfect hearth in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to talk Los Alamos Housing and comfy living spaces in Los Alamos with you!

With all of the recent winter weather and unusually cold temperatures, I got to thinking about life in the Chief Mechanic’s House without central heating. There was a warm wood stove to gather around, but can you imagine dragging your mattress into the living room to curl up around the wood stove like a pack of dogs?

Although… if you were one of the households affected by the power outages here in New Mexico in the last few days, that probably sounds like a great idea!

In the beginning of the Manhattan Project’s occupation of the cabin built by Floyd Womelsduff, six of the Junior scientists were packed into the front bedroom. They used bunk beds and shared the bathroom facilities with Bob Christy and his wife, who were billeted in the structure’s back bedroom. This meant poor Mrs. Christy had the dubious pleasure of tiptoeing through the crowded front bedroom to use the bathroom facilities! Can you imagine what that was like on a day to day basis? Sometimes I think modern folks have become downright divas regarding our living space requirements.

This continuing saga of musical billeting continued at T-128 until mid-1943 when General Groves reluctantly allowed “foreigners” to begin collaborating on the project. Sir James Chadwick of the British Mission had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 for his discovery of the neutron. He and his wife and their twin seventeen year old daughters moved to Los Alamos and suddenly things at the old Womelsduffs’ house got even more interesting.

According to Eleanor Jette’s book, Inside Box 1663, “The Chadwick’s arrived: Sir James and his lady lost their titles on the Hill.” This became a rather fascinating part of life in Los Alamos in the mid to late 1940s. The Chief Mechanic’s House was renovated prior to the Chadwick family’s occupation. The first thing that was added was central heating and the cabin was made more comfortable, but remained very rustic.

Lady Chadwick became quite the character here in Los Alamos. She’d never visited the US before, which I find is frequently still true of foreign nationals who find their way to Los Alamos even today. Fortunately, now we have far more information about a country to base our opinions on before arrival. But there are still plenty of people who make assumptions that the Rockies are just like the Ozarks, which are just like the Great Smoky Mountains. We know that those mountain ranges are enormously different in terrain, vegetation, and elevation, but if you were coming to Los Alamos before the Internet and you’d never experienced another American community…

Needless to say, Lady Chadwick began having social events to host and welcome the vast array of foreign science staff coming to Los Alamos. T-128 soon played host to Niels Bohr, Otto Frisch, Rudolph Peierls, George Placzek, and even Klaus Fuchs who would later be identified as a rather infamous spy.

Soon enough, she became a fairly loud voice in the Women’s Club. Both the American and British wives offered polite tolerance for Lady Chadwick’s attempts to “refine” them through the use of high teas and social events. The American wives got a bit snippy however when Lady Chadwick’s diatribes on “primitive” American culture took a nasty turn and she began publicly declaring she was unable to believe the Americans could have possibly been all that helpful on “D Day” due to their complete lack of social graces and culture.

Fortunately for Lady Chadwick, (and Los Alamos), Sir James began spending most of his time in Washington and soon moved his family to the city where Lady Chadwick and her daughters found the social scene and amenities more to their liking. I suppose her opinion of Los Alamos would’ve been much worse had she started on the East Coast and moved West…

Robert and Jean Bacher were thrilled to move into T-128 when the Chadwicks left town. Jean was fond of saying the bathtub was an irresistible incentive to babysitters and she had no trouble getting volunteers to watch her children. The Bachers were frequent entertainers and dozens of parties were held at T-128 over their stay, (more about that in a future post!).

By 1946, T-128 became designated as the Army post commander’s billet. In 1947, the AEC officially took over operation of Los Alamos. The first Los Alamos area manager was Carrol Tyler. While occupying the Chief Mechanic’s House, she suddenly found herself in charge of reams worth of top-secret documents left over from the project years. To help with storage, Zia Company installed a safe in the dining room of the Chief Mechanic’s House. Entirely hidden by wood panels, the safe was said to house the “crown jewels” of the atomic energy program during the late 1940s. The safe is still in the house and the Historical Society actually got a peek at the safe on a visit to the current owner.

By 1957, the housing points system was in place and T-128 was put into the draw with many of the other Bathtub Row cottages. Richard Baker moved into the Chief Mechanic’s House. He was a well-known chemist and head of CM-B Division at LASL. The Bakers later purchased the house in 1969 and owned it until 1995. The Chief Mechanic’s House is still most commonly known as “The Baker House”. The Bakers loved the novelty of living on Bathtub Row and the history of Los Alamos. The Baker House is still occupied today, with the record of being the longest continually occupied dwelling in Los Alamos.

When you’re ready to look for a dwelling to occupy here in Los Alamos, OR if you’re looking to sell your dwelling, give me a call! I’m a hometown girl at heart and I love chatting about real estate in Los Alamos! It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to get a peek inside the unique and often historic homes here in Los Alamos!

If you’ve spent much time at all in Los Alamos, you know we enjoy a rather remote location. As a third generation resident, I’ve heard all manner of stories about difficulties in getting goods and services up here throughout the years. As a real estate broker, I often remind my clients that patience is a necessity when considering home renovations, supplies for DIY projects around the house, and even in shopping for home furnishings! Deciding you want a new washer and dryer on a Friday morning isn’t a simple thing! These days even shopping online can result in days or even weeks of waiting for a delivery truck to haul your new appliances up the mountain.

This is now. An age of internet services when Amazon is beginning to explore drone delivery of goods! Try to picture what it might have been like in the 1920s when AJ Connell and Ashley Pond were trying to set up a boarding school for young men. Both students and masters at that time were more accustomed to living in cities where there were stores and factories and plenty of people available to offer goods and services. From the very beginning, AJ Connell knew he needed a skilled mechanic living on site 24/7 who could keep the place running.

Enter Floyd Womelsduff, a mechanic and all around handyman hired by Connell in 1924 to work for the Ranch School. Floyd’s brother, Jim Womelsduff, served as the LARS ranch foreman for a number of years and their mother, Sallie, lived in Espanola. Sallie Womelsduff inherited land in Espanola and moved from the Fort Worth, TX area to her new digs in Espanola not too terribly long before Floyd got the mechanic job up on the plateau at the ranch school. Floyd had come to New Mexico with his mother and spent several years working on a Rio Arriba County road crew.

Floyd Womelsduff wasn’t just important to the ranch school. Tall, slender, and rather quiet, Floyd was the plumber, auto mechanic, electrician, and diesel engine operator. In those days, the diesel generators were used to charge batteries for mechanical items all over the ranch. Everything from farm machinery to washing machines. The generators had to be coaxed into working every evening to provide light in all of the buildings, and it wasn’t unusual for Floyd and his brother Jim to be called out at all hours due to mechanical emergencies. They were even called out to help a forest service crew after an unexpected early snowfall caused the crew to be trapped near the fire watchtower up on St. Peter’s Dome (we sometimes refer to this as simply “the dome”).

In the early days, Floyd lived alone in the small, original mechanic’s cabin on the south side of Ashley Pond. Since Floyd lived up at the ranch school as well as his brother Jim, Floyd requested permission to build a larger cabin so his mother could move up to the plateau with her sons. There were four Womelsduff siblings all together.

Jim and Floyd had left school quite young when their father disappeared and left their mother, Sallie, to raise four children on her own. Lucy and Frank were the youngest Womelsduff siblings, and later Jim added his own family to the Womelsduffs living at the ranch school. In fact, Richard Womelsduff became quite interested in the history of the Pajarito Plateau as well as life at the ranch school. His writings would later become part of John D Wirth and Linda Harvey Aldrich’s book about the ranch school days. Richard named his Chapter 8, It Was a Good Time and Place to be a Boy as he seems to have very much enjoyed growing up on the ranch school property.

The “cabin” built by Floyd Womelsduff for himself and his mother was a traditional northern New Mexico log cabin. It began with slabs of rock in a shallow trench to create an outline of a cabin. Long Ponderosa Pines formed the walls and shorter ones supported the floor. The logs were all hand hewn and pinkish mortar was used to fill spaces between the logs. Unlike many of later ranch school “cottages”, the chief mechanic’s house was truly a log cabin and the logs were visible on the interior walls. However, it was such a nice log cabin that AJ Connell referred to it as the Chief Mechanic’s House from the very beginning.

There were two small bedrooms on the north side of the cabin and the living room took up the south side and a small kitchen occupied the west side of the cabin. There was no central heating built into the space and the Womelsduffs relied on the fireplace and cozy Navajo rugs to keep the place warm in winter.

The Chief Mechanic’s House was completed in 1925 and was occupied by Floyd and his mother Sallie until Sallie’s death in 1942. Sallie’s death came just a few weeks after the infamous War Department letter came to the Los Alamos Ranch School and changed everything within a few short months. Sallie’s family ofter said how glad they were that Sallie never had to deal with the displaced feeling which permeated the rest of the ranch school students and staff. She remained in her cozy cabin with her family and the lively but also relaxed ranch school way of life until she passed peacefully in her own home.

As with ALL ranch school buildings, the Chief Mechanic’s House’s role on the Pajarito Plateau didn’t end in 1942 when the Manhattan Project took over. In fact, the old cabin’s history only got more interesting as the years wore on. But we’ll talk more about that in a future post. And when you’re ready to talk about your own cozy dwelling in Los Alamos, give me a call! Whether you’re buying or selling, I’d love to talk real estate in Los Alamos with you!

When Project Y came to town, every ranch school structure that could serve a purpose was put into use. The Pyramid of Los Alamos aka Spruce Cottage became the “WAC Shack”. The ladies of the “Women’s Army Corps” enjoyed their stay at Spruce Cottage. With it’s sprawling group of cozy rooms, Spruce Cottage was home to a group of young women instead of the young men who had occupied it for so long. Not that Spruce Cottage didn’t see it’s share of young men, the WAC Shack was a popular place for enlisted men to hang out in the off duty hours.

Sometime in 1943, plans were put in place to build a larger dormitory for the WAC unit stationed in Los Alamos. At the peak of their effort, there were 260 WACs here in Los Alamos. Most of the WACs were stationed at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. There were smaller units at other Manhattan Project sights, and the largest unit of 275 were at Oak Ridge, Tenn. The “new” WAC Shack is still here in Los Alamos in its original location over on 17th Street. This building is currently under consideration for restoration with Los Alamos County. You can see more about this project HERE. There’s a lovely photo gallery of this building by Minesh Bacrania which is part of the “Behind the Fence” project which you can view HERE.

With the new WAC Shack in use, Spruce Cottage was split into three separate apartments. Thanks to the sprawling floorplan of the cottage, Spruce Cottage now known as T-115, had three different street addresses!

That bathtub so appreciated by the WACs, (who would’ve only had showers in their new dormitory), actually became quite the bragging point to anyone occupying the stone portion of the old Spruce Cottage. Kenneth Bainbridge and his family often allowed their friends to have a soak in their large, private bathtub. Kenneth Bainbridge was the physicist who took charge of the running of the Trinity site test.

You might imagine that when the Army remodeled Spruce Cottage after the WACs moved out, they did so as quickly as possible. Apparently this ended in some typical housing features being forgotten. Nathan and Elinor Ramsay were given an apartment created from the old boys dormitory section of Spruce Cottage. But when the Army put the apartment in, they forgot any closets. The Ramsays hoofed it over to the former Chief Mechanic’s House and borrowed two hand decorated wardrobes, which they utilized as closets until the Army remodeled Spruce Cottage yet again after the Fuller Lodge expansion.

Post War, circa 1948, Spruce Cottage was reconfigured into two apartments, duplex style. The end result left a “stone half” and a “wooden half”. The families of Jerome Kellogg and John Manley discovered that while they occupied two separate “homes”, they had no choice but to cooperate. Both apartments shared a hot water heater and a furnace. Can you imagine what that might be like? Good Neighbor behavior would take on a whole new meaning!

Stanislaw and Francois Ulam occupied the stone half of Spruce Cottage beginning in 1949. It is said that Stanislaw Ulam was sitting in the kitchen of the stone half of Spruce Cottage when he thought of a way to make the “Super” bomb work. His wife reported coming home and finding him sitting in the kitchen having his lunch while staring out the picture window with a strange expression on his face. While Ulam did indeed make a discovery that led to the development of thermonuclear weapons, his wife recalled later that she was appalled and had hoped the “Super” bomb would never successfully work.

In the summer of 1950 & 1951, Enrico and Laura Fermi rented the wooden half of Spruce Cottage. By 1951, James and Betty Lilienthal had begun to rent the stone half. When the dispersal of housing in Los Alamos began in 1969, the Lilienthals purchased both the stone half and the wooden half and returned Spruce Cottage to a single dwelling. Many folks in Los Alamos still think of Spruce Cottage as “the Lilienthal House”. The house was purchased by Bart and Colleen Ollinger in 1996 and has been preserved and appreciated by the long time Los Alamos residents ever since.

I love the long history of some of these old buildings in Los Alamos. It’s such a great thing to see that one of the most consistent parts of life in Los Alamos through the years is the ability to change with the times. I often hear from newcomers that they wish Los Alamos could get a this or a that. I remind folks that it’s best to just sit back and see what Los Alamos has brewing. Every decade seems to bring in a new mixture of activities, businesses, opportunities, and amenities. And when YOU’RE ready to join our community on the hill, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you.