There’s no doubt that the Oppenheimer movie has generated some additional tourist traffic this season. With all of the extra questions folks have been asking about the “old days”, I thought it might be interesting to dig a bit into the spot where traffic up the hill literally stopped. The Los Alamos Main Gate.

Main Gate Park

You’re probably plenty familiar with this local location. There’s a small, sparse campground there. The building with the facade on it is actually bathrooms. And none of this blocks the road or prevents any kind of traffic from passing through. In fact, if you just look at Main Gate Park and the tower on the other side of the road, it’s difficult to visualize exactly how the old front gate worked.

The Missing Pieces

So many times when we see historic images of the Main Gate, this is the image we see. An old car parked in front of a tiny building that very much resembles the bathrooms we have today. This historic photo from 1943 is certainly accurate. However, the background is entirely wrong. It appears that the clapboard building is on a skid that allows it to be moved around. It was likely in the middle of the street, which makes a lot of sense in 1943. But in the beginning, they thought there would only be a handful of scientists and some support staff. You might say that things quickly got out of hand and required a “main gate upgrade”.

The biggest missing piece of the original setup is actually the Petree Garden Center. As it is today, someone added more windows because it was a restaurant for a good many years. But when Los Alamos Landscaping purchased the building several years ago to become their garden center and a base of operations, I got the opportunity to take a peek at some of the still existing and rather ancient parts beneath the building that show it was very much part of the old main gate.

What structures, you ask?

The main “structure” that remains is an old tunnel that goes beneath the road and was used to access the tower on the opposite side of the road. The tunnel has some interesting graffiti. There was a youth group using it as a “hang out” at one point. Structurally speaking, it’s likely still sound. However it hasn’t been updated with any new wiring or safety egress for a long time so it is considered “closed”.

If you put the pieces together, this is what the gate looked like during most of the Manhattan Project.

This image is from a very old postcard. It shows how the Main Gain at Los Alamos used to appear when it was functional and the Secret City was closed to all but authorized personnel. The location makes quite a bit of sense really. Can you imagine what the view is like from that tower?

Since we’re talking about the Main Gate, I thought I’d toss in this postcard image as well. The photo is of the curve just past the Totavi gas station at the bottom of the hill. At that time it was called the K-195 highway. Some of you might remember when it looked like this. I suspect when the city was still closed, the road was much narrower and probably not paved. The ride up to the Main Gate must have been a nail biter for folks who’d never experienced mountain driving! It’s still that way for some visitors even though the locals tend to drive the thing like NASCAR.

If you’ve got additional information about our Main Gate, please feel free to leave it in the comments! I’d love to hear your thoughts. As always, I try to be thorough in my research, but there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle of Los Alamos and sometimes they don’t always fit together to make the same story. I’m a third generation Los Alamos resident and I love the history of this amazing place! If you’re ready to be part of our community, give me a call. I’d love to talk real estate with you!