Traveler's Guide To Nuclear Weapons

Click the buttons below to view the photographs in our Photo Gallery. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs were taken by the authors during their atomic tours around the nation. These photographs may not be copied or reproduced without the prior express written permission of Historical Odysseys Publishers. We will add new photographs periodically.

California

Former Dow Chemical Laboratory in Walnut Creek. Performed uranium ore research.

Former Dow Chemical Laboratory in Walnut Creek. Now owned by the Department of Energy.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's home on Eagle Hill in Kensington, near Berkeley.

Oppenheimer's office on the third floor of Le Conte Hall at U.C. Berkeley. (View 1)

Oppenheimer's office on the third floor of Le Conte Hall at U.C. Berkeley. (View 2)

Bust of Oppenheimer on the first floor of Le Conte Hall.

Exterior of Le Conte Hall.

Room 307 in Gilman Hall at U.C. Berkeley, where Glenn T. Seaborg discovered plutonium.

Close-up of the roof of Le Conte Hall. The veranda to the left is outside Oppenheimer's office. The enclosed veranda to the right is outside the room where his "luminaries" worked out the basic mechanism for the atomic bomb.

The older northern wing of Young Hall at the University of California, Davis. Here during the Manhattan Project, scientists and technicians from Tennessee Eastman studied ways to process uranium for the electromagnetic isotope separation machines, or calutrons.

The Crocker Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, which operates a cyclotron enclosed by a magnet from UC-Berkeley. This magnet once surrounded the 60-inch cyclotron that Glenn T. Seaborg used to create the first samples of plutonium at Berkeley's Crocker Laboratory.

The concrete-enclosed cyclotron room at the Crocker Laboratory at U.C. Davis.

The cyclotron and blue historic magnet at the Crocker Laboratory at U.C. Davis.

Some of the unique equipment used to position the cyclotron beam targets at the Crocker Laboratory at U.C. Davis.

The cyclotron control room at the Crocker Laboratory at U.C. Davis.

Aircraft hangers at the former Hamilton Army Airfield in Novato. Near the end of World War II, a C-47 transport from Albuquerque carrying components for the first atomic bombs landed here before continuing on to Tinian Island.

Colorado

Southwestern corner of Climax uranium mill in Grand Junction. The red-brick building at the right was one of the mill buildings.

Spectacular view of the Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction.

Connecticut

Headquarters of the American Brass Company in Waterbury.

Rolling mill of the American Brass Company in Waterbury.

Idaho

City Hall in Arco, Idaho.

Historical Marker in Arco, Idaho.

Massachusetts

Starmet in Concord. Nuclear Metals formerly fabricated reactor fuel here for the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy.

Nebraska

Entrance sign at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant in Grand Island. Prior to 1961, this plant shipped explosive powders to nuclear weapons facilities, which fabricated them into explosive lenses for nuclear weapon primaries.

Main entrance of the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant during a blizzard.

Nevada

The lonely road to the Project Faultless site near Moores Station.

Surface ground zero area at the Project Faultless site. The main device insertion casing sticks out of the ground.

Brass plaque on the casing at the Project Faultless site. Note that Seaborg's middle initial is incorrect.

New Jersey

The former Westinghouse Electric Elevator Company on Pacific Avenue in Jersey City. Here during the early years of World War II, Westinghouse fabricated prototype centrifuge hardware for separating uranium isotopes. This is the western structure.

The central structure of the former Westinghouse Electric Elevator Company.

The eastern structure of the former Westinghouse Electric Elevator Company.

New Mexico

The Uranium Cafe in downtown Grants.

The old Lamy train station where Manhattan Project workers transferred onto buses for the next leg of their journey to Santa Fe and Los Alamos.

The rustic waiting room of the Lamy train station.

The ground zero monument at the Project Gasbuggy detonation site in the Carson National Forest of Northern New Mexico.

The lonely road to the Project Gnome detonation site outside of Carlsbad.

The barren gravel road between the Anaconda Copper Mining uranium mill and the Homestake Mining uranium mill just outside of Grants.

The old cabin near Los Alamos where Manhattan Project scientists warmed up after skiing. It survived recent forest fires.

The house at 1016 49th Street in Los Alamos where Edward Teller and his family lived during the Manhattan Project.

Physicist Enrico Fermi, and later Norris Bradbury, lived here at 1300 20th Street in Los Alamos.

The old bachelor dormitory at Sage Loop and 15th Street where Richard Feynman lived during the Manhattan Project.

The Baker House located just west of the Los Alamos Historical Museum. During World War II, it housed military officers and later Sir James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron and head of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project. Dr. Richard Baker, a leader in plutonium chemistry at Los Alamos since 1943, and his wife Bonnie lived in this house between 1959 and 1995.

The main gate to the Omega Site at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The 12-story tall Rack Assembly and Alignment Complex at the Radiochemistry Site (TA-48) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This complex fabricated and tested the "racks" that held nuclear test devices.

The original Manhattan Project-era guardhouse on Trinity Drive near the former front gate of the Los Alamos town and laboratory.

The former Ranch School Power House. George Kistiakowsky and his new bride moved into this house in 1945.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's former house on Bathtub Row, now a historic landmark.

A line of visitors stretches through the backyard of Oppenheimer's former house during the Oppenheimer & The Manhattan Project symposium at the end of June 2004.

The living room of Oppenheimer's former house.

Many a Los Alamos physicist leaned on this fireplace, sipping Oppenheimer's signature martinis (the glass edge is dipped in lime juice and honey).

Cynthia Kelly, President of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, during the dedication of the Oppenheimer House at the Rose Garden behind the Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos on June 25, 2004.

Cynthia Kelly at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

Pete Nanos, Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

Pete Nanos at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

U.S. Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

Andy Oppenheimer, a distant relative of J. Robert Oppenheimer, at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

Governor Bill Richardson and Senator Pete Domenici after unveiling the dedication plaque at the Oppenheimer House dedication.

New York

King's Crown Hotel (tan building) near Columbia University where Leo Szilard lived.

View of northern Manhattan from the Columbia University area.

Pupin Hall, Columbia University, Manhattan.

Door leading to the instrument-cluttered basement of Pupin Hall, where Herbert Anderson was the first to observe fission in the United States.

Registered National Historic Landmark plaque at Pupin Hall.

Havemeyer Building at Columbia University. Manhattan Project gaseous diffusion research took place here.

The British Mission to the Manhattan Project stayed here at 37 Exchange Place in Manhattan.

The northern portion of the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna from the northern bank of the icy Mohawk River.

376 Hudson Street in Manhattan. This is where the Atomic Energy Commission's New York Operations Office ran its Health and Safety Laboratory during the 1950s and 1960s.

The former Simonds Saw & Steel Company in Lockport, New York. From 1948 to the mid-1950s workers there rolled more than 12,000 tons of uranium, which ultimately became fuel for the Hanford Reactors. The "excised" portion of the property was the location of the uranium machine shop. (Photograph courtesy of Ginger Strand, New York City)

The former Simonds Saw & Steel Company in Lockport, New York. View north from Ohio Street. (Photograph courtesy of Ginger Strand, New York City)

South Carolina

The F Canyon at the Savannah River Plant near Aiken.

The empty shell of the Heavy Water Components Test Reactor at the Savannah River Plant.

The R Reactor building at the Savannah River Plant.

Close-up of the decommissioned R Reactor building.

A field filled with the massive foundations for the columns of the Heavy Water Plant at the Savannah River Plant.

Former Ellenton townsite at the Savannah River Plant.

The once controversial Defense Waste Processing Plant at the Savannah River Plant.

Tinian Island (all photographs courtesy of Masood Karimipour, Saipan)

Aerial view east-southeast of the North Field area of Tinian Island. Runway Able is on the left and Runway Baker is on the right. From here in August 1945, the B-29 bombers Enola Gay and Bockscar launched their atomic attacks on Japan. The eastern aircraft parking pad is flanked by the former Japanese Air Operations Building to the east and air raid shelters to the west. The former Japanese Air Administration Building is rising above the jungle to the north of this pad.

Aerial view southeast of the North Field area. The heart-shaped pad is where personnel from the 509th Composite Group loaded atomic bombs into the B-29s. Bomb loading Pit #1 (for Little Boy) is the dot in the left lobe and Pit #2 (for Fat Man) is the dot in the right lobe.

Aerial view south of the North Field area.

Another aerial view south of the North Field area.

Aerial view northwest of the North Field area.

View west along Runway Able.

View east along Runway Baker.

Runway Able.

View west of the atomic bomb loading pits, now filled in. The monument for Pit #1 is closest to the camera in the foreground. Pit #2 is marked by the monument located farthest from the camera.

View of atomic bomb loading Pit #1. The plaque on the monument reads "From this loading pit the first atomic bomb ever to be used in combat was loaded aboard a B-29 aircraft and dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945. The bomber, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., USAAF, of the 509th Composite Group, Twentieth Air Force, United States Army Air Forces, was loaded late in the afternoon of August 6, 1945 and at 0245 the following morning took off on its mission. Captain William S. Parsons, USN, was aboard as weaponeer."

View of atomic bomb loading Pit #2. The plaque on the monument reads "From this loading pit the second atomic bomb ever to be used in combat was loaded aboard a B-29 aircraft and dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945. The bomber was piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeny, USAAF, of the 509th Composite Group, Twentieth Air Force, United States Army Air Forces. On August 10, 1945 at 0300, the Japanese Emperor without his cabinet's consent decided to end the Pacific War."

Former Japanese Air Operations Building.

Former Japanese air raid shelters.

Monument in front of the former Japanese air raid shelters. It is dedicated to the 6th Bomb Group, 313th Bomb Wing.

Virginia

Gun table for firing Project Elsie casings at the Naval Proving Ground in Dalhgren.

Bunker near gun table at the Naval Proving Ground in Dalhgren.

Atomic tourist standing between the Project Elsie impact blocks at the Naval Proving Ground in Dalhgren.

Close-up of shattered impact block at the Naval Proving Ground in Dalhgren.

Washington, D.C.

State Department Building. General Groves served here during WWII when it was the War Department Building.

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