J. Robert Oppenheimer and his band of scientists were all about the chain reaction. Oppenheimer’s explosive box office returns set numerous records this summer, and now that theaters have stopped rattling, the fallout is coming to your living room. Which is to say that Christopher Nolan’s tale of fission and fusion is now available to purchase on Blu-ray, DVD and 4K Ultra HD, and for a digital purchase (not rental) on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play and other platforms.
Oppenheimer‘s near-billion-dollar draw clearly made an impact with audiences, though how it will manifest remains to be seen. Will more people begin wearing porkpie hats, as the real Oppenheimer and Cillian Murphy’s version of him did? Or will folks start reading passages from the Bhagavad Gita during clutch moments of their lives? Or perhaps there will be an increase in Oppenheimer-themed tourism? New Zealand has been squeezing every nickel out of Lord of the Rings for 20 years, so why shouldn’t Los Alamos, New Mexico, do the same?
The Manhattan-born Oppenheimer first moseyed into Los Alamos (named for its groves of aspen trees) in 1922, during one of his teen visits to the West. In American Prometheus, authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin describe him as “love-struck with set stark desert/mountain beauty.” He later selected the location for his secret scientific city, owing to its natural seclusion and its centrality to other key spots in the atomic bomb development process, like Chicago, Illinois; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Pasadena, California. (Los Alamos is about 35 miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico.)
Benny Safdie is Edward Teller and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer wearing their Los Alamos security badgesMelinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
The lab’s construction displaced residents including Hispanic American homesteaders — some allegedly at gunpoint — giving them just 48 hours to evacuate their homes, which were bulldozed. Their livestock was killed or set loose.
The Army Corps of Engineers very quickly created barracks and labs, though it took a while to get the roads paved. (In the film you’ll see some shots of mud; the book goes into more detail of the new neighborhood’s ubiquitous dirt.) Given the secrecy and intensity of the work being done, Los Alamos was a closed city. As such it built its own dance halls and places of worship, took over a private boys’ school, and surrounded the town with different ringed access points with armed guards.
As many as 6,000 people lived at the community during the height of the Manhattan Project. When the war ended, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission maintained a lab there. For years, there were no private businesses, and no one could own property. The town did not become open to the public until 1957.
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Today, there is still a substantial research and development laboratory on the premises, known as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which, according to its website, is working “to solve national security challenges through simultaneous excellence.” Work at the lab has led to breakthroughs in cancer research and vaccines for HIV. It was also home to the story of Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee, who, in 1999, was suspected of leaking nuclear secrets to China, but later successfully sued the U.S. government and news organizations like the New York Times and ABC News for violating his privacy rights.
Cillian Murphy, Olli Haaskivi, Matt Damon and Dane Dehaan stroll through Los Alamos in “Oppenheimer”Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
The high concentration of PhDs actually makes Los Alamos one of the richest cities in the U.S., and it also has one of the lowest crime rates. The 2020 census listed around 13,000 residents. Neighboring towns, loaded with service workers for the well-payed families and for the Los Alamos labs themselves, tell a different story.
OK, but let’s say you are not really into bunsen burners and particle accelerators. Is there anything to do in Los Alamos? Indeed, there is!
One can visit the Bradbury Science Museum (named for Oppenheimer’s successor Norris Bradbury, not the science fiction author Ray Bradbury), there’s what looks to be a lovely art gallery in what was once a dining hall of the original boys’ school, and also a small theater. (Currently they’ve got Reefer Madness: The Musical up.) There’s also an ancestral Pueblo site that has been preserved for visitors.
The small community also plays up its local angle, calling its local buses Atomic City Transit, selling Atomic City Salsa at a gift shop and offering microbrews at the Atomic Bar.
A quick glance at Airbnb shows a mix colorful converted barns overlooking gorgeous mountain vistas, but also plenty of lifeless condo rooms with flatscreen televisions unadorned walls. You get what you pay for! There are five hotels in Los Alamos proper: a Holiday Inn Express, a Comfort Inn and a Hampton Inn & Suites (snooze, snooze and snooze with your own stove.) There’s also an independent, rustic-but-pleasant looking motel called the Canyon Inn (it is apparently booked all the way through Spring 2024), an upscale bed-and-breakfast called the North Road Inn (pet friendly!) and a truly lovely looking collection of cottages and a main house tucked in the woods called the Pueblo Gardens. They apparently specialize in micro weddings and elopements.
Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt taking in the natural vistas of New MexicoMelinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
If you are into hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, skiing or any other way to end up in the hospital with a broken leg, Los Alamos was the place to do it when Oppie was a kid, and remains that way today. Looks like the café atop Mount Pajarito serves tater tots, so that’s cool.
One should note, however, that Los Alamos and all its scientific experimentation has made the area a little bit toxic. In 2005, large concentrations of hexavalent chromium were discovered. Cleanup procedures were stalled by the state as recently as this summer.
Keep in mind, though, that Los Alamos is about a four-and-a-half hour drive from the Trinity site and White Sands National Park. Also, visitors are only allowed to enter Trinity two days a year. If you do go there, though, you might encounter trinitite, a gray-green glass-like radioactive compound unique to the area that formed when the desert soil was exposed to the nuclear blast. It is now illegal to remove any trinitite from the area, but initially specimens were gathered and sold like any other Cold War trinket. One can still buy some, legally, online. It can also be found in museums around the globe.