Manhattan Project sites get national park status

The Obama administration is establishing a series of national park sites recognizing the Manhattan Project.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz pledged Tuesday to work together to preserve locations in Tennessee, New Mexico and Washington tied to the historic program.

{mosads}The Manhattan Project was an American-led covert science program during World War II to develop an atomic bomb. More than 600,000 people were involved in the project, which “laid the groundwork for our National Lab system,” Moniz said in a statement.

“Through the preservation and interpretation of the Manhattan Project, the National Park Service will share with the world the story of one of America’s most transformative scientific discoveries that fundamentally altered the course of the 20th Century,” Jewell said in a statement. 

“The park will also serve as a reminder that these actions and discoveries must be handled with great care for they can have world-changing consequences.” 

The 2015 National Defense Authorization Act established a “Manhattan Project National Historical Park” to tell “the story of people, events, science and engineering that led to the creation of the atomic bomb, the role these weapons played in World War II and how the role of the United States in global affairs has evolved in the nuclear age,” the Interior Department said in a statement. 

The effort announced Tuesday will lead to National Park Service sites at three locations — in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Los Alamos, N.M.; and at the Hanford B Reactor site in Washington state — that contributed to the project. 

The Park Service said it will rely on the expertise of scholars and historians, including some from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities leveled by American atomic bombs in World War II, to develop the sites’ exhibits.

It’s official! Manhattan Project Natl Historic Park established today. Congrats @NatlParkService @Interior @energy pic.twitter.com/jILcUbAEq4

— Frank Klotz (@FrankKlotzNNSA) November 10, 2015