Los Alamos: The making of a community

1917: Ashley Pond starts the Los Alamos Ranch School, a private boarding school for boys that blends academics and rigorous physical activity. Students include future authors Gore Vidal and William S. Burroughs. The Los Alamos community on the Pajarito Plateau consists largely of scattered homesteaders and the school.

1942: On Nov. 25, the U.S. War Department approves Los Alamos as the site for a laboratory focusing on research and design programs as part of the Manhattan Project effort to build an atomic bomb. The Army buys the Ranch School property and about 54,000 surrounding acres--mostly land owned by the U.S. Forest Service. In the project's first year, 80 babies are born in Los Alamos, a town that officially does not exist. Their birth certificates show their place of birth as P.O. Box 1663. The average age of residents is 24. Los Alamos becomes something of a boom town, with the population doubling every nine months until the end of World War II in 1945.

1943: Central School opens in September to serve the Manhattan Project children. The school building is considered one of the most elaborate built in Los Alamos during the war, angering military officials who intended that the wartime community remain temporary. Walter W. Cook of the University of Minnesota plans the school's curriculum. The federal government runs the school until 1946 and funds the school...