Los Alamos Ranch School gets nod at this year’s ScienceFest
Manhattan Project ended educational endeavor founded 100 years ago, but community remembers its contributions and notable alumni
The 550 boys who attended the Los Alamos Ranch School and its summer camps over the span of a quarter-century before the U.S. became involved in World War II spent their mornings tackling a rigorous curriculum at the remote mountain campus.
Their courses included Greek and Latin. Classes were small, sometimes a single student, led by Ivy League graduates.
Along with chores at the working ranch and campus, afternoons at the school were filled with outdoor activities, such as swimming, fishing, hunting and hiking and taking packing trips in the Jemez Mountains. In the winter, the boys skied on Sawyer’s Hill and played ice hockey on what is now called Ashley Pond, named for the school’s founder.
The students came from well-to-do families across the nation, and many went on to Ivy League colleges and prominent careers. Among them were writer Gore Vidal; former
Sears, Roebuck and Co. President Arthur Wood; Hudson Motor Co. founder Roy Chapin; Santa Fe Opera founder John Crosby; and John Shedd Reed, president for nearly two decades of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
“These guys were the sons of captains of industry, and many became captains of industry themselves,” said Heather McClenahan, director of the Los Alamos Historical Society. Other Ranch School alums became successful in the arts and the military, she said, and the school, overall, was “very impactful on the nation.”
But the Manhattan Project, a secret U.S. government research program to develop the world’s first atomic bombs, brought an end to the elite school about a year after the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The U.S. Army took over the property in early 1943 to create a home for the weapons program, cutting the school year short. Four boys received their diplomas Jan. 28, 1943. They would be the Los Alamos Ranch School’s last graduates.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Ranch School’s founding, the 2017 Los Alamos ScienceFest, an annual five-day celebration of science in everyday life, will spotlight the school, its prestigious students and its ties to the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Manhattan Project. Student bios will be posted at venues around town during the festival, from Wednesday through Sunday, and special activities and family-friendly tours will take visitors back to the adventurous days of the rugged boys school on the Pajarito Plateau.
Had it not been for the Ranch School, McClenahan said, the national laboratory in New Mexico may not have been built at Los Alamos.
Its national acclaim and heavy recruitment of boys from prominent, wealthy families were part of its downfall.
J. Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves received word about the Ranch School property in a military report as they were planning to gather Manhattan Project scientists at one site for security reasons. The report detailed a promising spot for the project.
Oppenheimer, a New Yorker who would become the head of the Los Alamos lab during World War II, was familiar with the area. He fell in love with Northern New Mexico as a young man and purchased a ranch in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He often would bring his physics students from the University of California, Berkeley to ride horses and explore the region.
He joined Groves on a scouting trip to New Mexico to find a home for the Manhattan Project, and the Ranch School was one of their stops. Another was Jemez Springs.
Groves decided the canyon at Jemez Springs was “too dark,” even for such a secret project. But he found the Ranch School property was just what he was looking for — isolated, but not too remote, close to transportation, but not too close, easy to guard and equipped with electricity, running water, roads and living spaces for scientists. Oppenheimer also favored the site. Neither Oppenheimer nor Groves ever attended the Ranch School, despite a widely held belief that the men were among its graduates.
But at least two other officials tied to the Manhattan Project were students there. One was Lt. Col. Whitney Ashbridge, base commander in Los Alamos. Another was William Baird, the lead engineer on Tinian Island in the Northern Mariana Islands who helped prepare the base where the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, took off with Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.
Pond, a Detroit businessman who had been a sickly child, had envisioned a ranch school years before the Los Alamos institution was established.
While serving as one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the SpanishAmerican War, he contracted typhoid and moved to the Southwest to recover. He lived on a working ranch and found it was an environment where a boy could thrive physically while also focusing on academics, according to a story by David Joshua Anderson on NewMexicoHistory.org, the website of the Office of the State Historian.
“His vision was to provide young men with an active life on a working ranch, increasing their strength rather than wasting it in cities where he saw them ‘doing no good,’ ” Anderson wrote.
Pond’s first attempt was on a ranch northeast of Las Vegas, N.M., on the Mora River in 1904. But just before the school opened in September that year, Anderson wrote, the river flooded and destroyed his project.
“Pond vowed that if he had the opportunity again he would build his school on a high plateau, far from the danger of another flood,” Anderson wrote.
A homestead ranch on the Pajarito Plateau proved the ideal location.
A.J. Connell, a U.S. Forest Service officer
and experienced Scoutmaster with the Boy Scouts, became the director of the school, which was modeled on training used by the Scouts and served about 30 boys per year in grades 7-12. Tuition, at $2,000, was high for the time.
Edward Fuller, the namesake of Los Alamos’ John Gaw Meem-designed Fuller Lodge, also was an associate, and his family provided much of the funding for the school.
The school took over a few ranch buildings from the homestead and constructed the Big House, a two-story log building that included classrooms and, eventually, a screened-in porch where the boys slept year-round.
The Big House was torn down by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947. All that remains of the old school is Fuller Lodge, built in 1928, and the homes of the masters and school staff on Bathtub Row — the only street in the early days of Los Alamos that had homes with bathtubs.
Ranch School boys all belonged to Los Alamos Boy Scout Troop 22 and wore the Scouts uniform. Part of their time at the school was spent working to earn merit badges and learning survival skills.
Every boy was assigned a horse when he arrived and was expected to take care of it.
The boys didn’t just play in the outdoors; they also worked, helping to construct the large trail system around Los Alamos. Their efforts left a lasting impact.
Many of the boys returned to Los Alamos for Ranch School class reunions. The last was in 1993 — 50 years after the final commencement ceremony.
The ones who returned, McClenahan said, were those who liked the school because “they had adventures they never dreamed of.”