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In August 1945, the US army dropped a secret over Japan: fully functional nuclear bombs, which instantly killed tens of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 6,000 miles away, meanwhile, in northern New Mexico, one newspaper carried a headline with uniquely local flair.
“Now They Can be Told Aloud These Stoories [sic] of the Hill” blared a rushed edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican. The article revealed that Los Alamos – a mysterious settlement, built atop a picturesque mesa – had been instrumental in the creation of these new weapons of mass destruction.
Today, Los Alamos is a secret no longer: it’s a small community with about 18,000 people living in the main town and a suburb called White Rock. But the nuclear lab remains, and the city is still an island in many ways: an extraordinary pocket of wealth and privilege, surrounded by some of the poorest counties in New Mexico, one of the poorest states in America.
