A 15-year effort to save sites and buildings vital to the Manhattan Project as a national historic park paid off in December when President Obama signed the fiscal year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act. Tucked into the massive legislation was a provision instructing the Departments of the Interior and Energy to have the park open within one year.
The two agencies were told to conclude a memorandum of agreement delineating the roles of each in creating and maintaining the park. Interior’s National Park Service (NPS) will most likely operate the park, which comprises World War II–era structures at the three locations where most of the development of the atomic bomb took place: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Richland, Washington. DOE, which owns all the facilities, is expected to maintain them, says Cynthia Kelly, founder and president of the nonprofit Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF). Kelly was the...
