APS News

Manhattan Project National Historical Park Established

Park commemorates sites located in Tennessee, New Mexico, and Washington

November 11, 2015  |  Emily Conover

The signing ceremony establishing the Manhattan Project National Historical Park
Photo: Atomic Heritage Foundation

The signing ceremony establishing the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.  (Top, L to R) David Klaus, Deputy Under Secretary at DOE; Jonathan Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service, Senators Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, & Maria Cantwell; (Seated) Secretaries Sally Jewell & Ernie Moniz

The decade-long effort aimed at creating a Manhattan Project National Historical Park has finally been successful. On November 10, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz signed a “memorandum of agreement” officially establishing the park. The park will protect historic buildings important to the birth of the atomic age, located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington.

The memorandum details how the Department of Energy, which manages the sites, will work together with the National Park Service to preserve the sites and establish museums that would explain and interpret their history for the public.

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