Atomic-Age Fiefdom

On its well-manicured surface, Los Alamos, N. Mex. looks much like any other city spawned in the postwar boom of the thriving Southwest. Along the rolling surface of the Pajarito Plateau, paved roads curl past row on row of freshly painted wooden homes. Late-model cars crowd the parking lots that hedge in a 73-store shopping plaza. In green backyards, barbecue pits and mail-order lawn furniture symbolize the age of American leisure.

But for all such outward signs of normalcy, Los Alamos (pop. 12,580) is unlike any other community in New Mexico--or indeed the U.S. Birthplace of the atomic bomb and still the nation's center for advanced thermonuclear studies, it is the mid-century version of the company town: the Atomic City, owned lock, stock and laboratory by a Federal Government that created it from wilderness, revved it into productive gear, and has never quite been able to put it on its own.

Benevolent Autocracy. Although the nuclear cities of Richland, Wash. (pop. 23,500) and Oak Ridge, Tenn. (pop. 27,170) have long since been transformed from guarded camps to fully incorporated towns, the 77-sq.-mi. Los Alamos area remains a private fiefdom of the Atomic Energy Commission. The city has representation in the state legislature but no mayor; local government rests firmly in the benevolently autocratic hands of AEC Resident Manager Paul Wilson. Through its housing division, AEC owns all but a handful of Los Alamos' 3,216 homes, rents them at bargain rates ranging from $22 to $130 a month.

Last week Los Alamos was taking a first small step toward eventual independence. Following the submission of sealed bids from contractors, AEC Manager Wilson was negotiating an agreement with a Los Angeles firm to build 135 homes for sale in Los Alamos' White Rock district. Long hampered by a housing shortage (the Government has built no new housing units since 1957), Los Alamos will not be ready for independence, AEC believes, until some 1,200 new homes are built to take care of the city's ever-growing families. Says Wilson: "This project will be a start toward relieving our housing shortage and will get Los Alamos moving toward private status."

Even in its hoped-for private life, Los Alamos seems unlikely to lose the curious atmosphere that has existed ever since Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and some 100 assistants on the Manhattan Project took over a deserted boys' school in 1943. Since science is still its only industry, townsmen's brows are extraordinarily high. More than 400 city residents have Ph.D.s, a title so common on the "Hill" that by general agreement only medical men at the 84-bed Los Alamos hospital are called "Doctor."

Inner-Directed Life. Partly because of its isolated setting, partly because of its top-secret work, Los Alamos has always had a clannish, inner-directed way of life. Nowadays guests no longer need passes to get inside the housing area; even so, few of Los Alamos' longtime residents can claim many friends in the New Mexico communities near by. Los Alamos' young married couples (average age of the AEC staffer is 39) entertain each other at casual patio dinners where the talk is more dazzling than the food, throng to a suburbia-sized horde (146) of civic organizations ranging from the Flying Saucer Square Dance Club to the Military Order of Lady Bugs. Dress is studiously informal: a woman in hat and gloves is clearly going on a trip "outside." Except on scientific business or for shopping trips to Santa Fe (24 miles away by good highway), Los Alamos' residents seldom venture far away. Despite its isolation, the city has developed a first-rate Little Theater, is a regular stop for concert stars.

"This is a relaxed place," says Physicist Tom Putnam. "Here we have good facilities, ample opportunity to attend scientific meetings, a good academic atmosphere, a full family life, the advantages of a small town, good schools and lots of outdoor living. In fact, we have everything."

Thanks to the plenitude of its comforts, Los Alamos has a low personnel turnover--about 20 a month--and few of its nuclear specialists really believe that they will some day go home to Ann Arbor or Chapel Hill. Notes Robert Porton, an ex-Army sergeant who helped found Los Alamos' radio station: "There are still some scientists who have been around since 1943 and still talk about going home, but they don't really mean it. If they go back to the old home on vacation, they always come scurrying back here." Boyd West, the C.P.A. who represents Los Alamos in the state house of representatives, says frankly: "When I make trips out into the hectic world, I find it a bit frightening." And so, in a way, it is.

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