Los Alamos is a small town, with a lot of science. So, nerds, you’ll love it here. So, here is my Los Alamos Top Three, curated for the nerds:
- The Bathtub Row Brewery: Why? It is a cooperative! We need more cooperatives generally speaking, but more brewery cooperatives would be ideal. How does it work, you ask? Well, anyone can join the co-op by buying in at a few different levels. When the brewery is profitable, those who bought-in get a cut. In several instances in the brewery’s history, the member/owners decided to invest the profit into the brewery to expand production, for example.
- Los Alamos History Museum: A lot of shady shit went down in Los Alamos. This museum chronicles a lot (but dear god, not nearly all) of it.
- Bradbury Science Museum: Nuclear researcher Robert Krohn began putting together small exhibits based on the classified experiments that were taking place on the base to protect them from being lost to history. He displayed his collection in a disused ice house. The lab’s director, Norris Bradbury, after whom the current museum is named, approved of the display. In 1954, the Los Alamos Laboratory’s museum opened to anyone with the proper security clearance. In 1963, an unclassified wing was approved by Bradbury. Experiments, documents, and other now public items, many dating back to the World War II research that was conducted at the lab, were put on display and the museum opened its doors to thousands of visitors from all over the country.
Los Alamos won’t require a ton of your time, so do combine it with some of the attractions nearby. The Los Alamos tourism guide lists some very ambitious, aggressive plans for a 1, 2, or 3-day visit that you can use for some inspiration!