Walking with the ancients & the atom bomb
Trip Start
Jul 05, 2008
1
13
34
Trip End
Sep 2008
Taos,
New Mexico,
United States
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Frijoles Canyon
The valley is carved through a 1000 foot layer of a volcanic stone called tuff. The tuff was created when the volcano in the nearby Jemez mountains erupted with a force 600 times more powerful than the Mt. Saint Helens eruption. This stone is very soft and can be carved and cut to form the cave dwellings. The stone also has naturally eroded pockets that simplify the carving process.
The honeycombed cliffs
The tuff cliffs
The cliff sides are pockmarked with the many cavates that were carved over the years. The cliffs also provided support to build multi-story dwellings with the cliff face and caves as the back wall. Additionally, in the 1400s there was a large pueblo on the valley floor. Deb & I walked along the cliff admiring the ruins.
The pueblo close up
The pueblo from above
One of the many cavates
A reconstructed cliff house
At the end of the trail is a structure called the Alcove House. The only challenge is that to get to it you have to climb up 140 feet of stairs and ladders!
The warning sign
Steve on the climb
The whole climb
One tall ladder!
I started up with Deb following, but with her dislike for ladders and heights, she quickly stopped and went back to the benches at the bottom of the climb to wait for her foolhardy husband to return. The ladders were fairly easy to climb, but a few were quite long and you wondered if you were ever going to get to the top. At the top, there is a large stone overhang where a kiva had been built along with other ceremonial structures. It was quite impressive.
The alcoves
The kiva at the alcoves
After climbing down into the kiva and taking a few photos, I climbed back down to the valley floor and we walked back to the visitors' center where we had left the car.
Inside the kiva
Going back down
What the alcoves looked like
All of the development for Bandelier was done by the CCC back in the 1930s and early 1940s. They created the road down to the valley floor, built all of the buildings, built the furniture, and even made tinware lights to light it all. Bandelier was one of the largest of the CCC projects and the park service is working to preserve their work along with archaeological ruins as well.
After we left Bandelier, we went into Los Alamos where the first atomic bombs were designed and manufactured. Los Alamos is company town, with that company being the Los Alamos National Laboratory. They have a museum that highlights that event as well as the ongoing scientific mission of the lab. Since the US no longer is designing new weapons or testing existing ones, the Lab's mission is to ensure that the weapons in the arsenal are still functioning. This is a tremendously complicated task since they are not allowed to set one off to verify their testing regime. They are forced to test every system in isolation and then draw conclusions that the weapons will work as initially designed and tested.
There was also a film presentation of the development of the bomb and the community that was built in Los Alamos in 1942. The only thing on the mesa at that time was a boy's ranch school that was taken over by the government. The top scientists got housing in the ranch's facility but all others were housed in barracks hastily erected for the large influx of people. The ranch facilities were known as "Bathtub Row" since they were the only homes in town with bathtubs. Since there were no paved streets or sidewalks, during the rainy season, the town turned into a sea of mud. I found the exhibits very interesting but Deb rapidly became overloaded, much like I do when we do a day of gallery tours. Turnabout is fair play! We then made the return drive, arriving back in Taos just in time for our daily afternoon downpour.
