Ok, sounds like fun. I've always had a strong interest in the Chili line, as well as the Manhattan Project (sort of comes with the territory growing up in Los Alamos I guess) so let's see if we can narrow things down to one or two specific questions.
The Los Alamos Boys School was founded by Ashley Pond in 1917. Otowi crossing / station was the closest railroad link to the outside world, and we can be quite sure that supplies for the school, as well as it's students rode the Chili line up to the end.
The ICC ordered the line abandoned in Jan. 1941. There were hearings in April, but to no avail. The last recorded train left Santa Fe on Sept. 1, 1941 headed by #470 with a consist of three freight cars, the usual baggage-mail car, two coaches, and two business cars (I don't have any info on car numbers or that sort of thing).
The dismantling contract was awarded to the Joseph Pepper Construction Company of Denver. I can't find starting and ending dates regarding the scrapping operations in the stuff that I've got - except that material from the scrapping process was "stored and sorted in Antonito in 1941-1942".
December 7, 1941, Perl Harbor was bombed.
Sept. 17, 1942, one year and 16 days after the last run on the Chili Line, General Leslie Groves was informed that he had been selected to manage a new project that could win the war, a project which we now know as the "Manhattan Project".
Oct. 19, 1942 J. Robert Oppenheimer was appointed director of "Site Y" which would be the theoretical and engineering core of the Manhattan Project.
Groves dictated that "Site Y" would provide "room for 265 people, be located at least 200 miles from any international boundry, but west of the Mississippi, [have] some existing facilities, [and be located] in a natural bowl with the hills nearby that shaped the bowl so that fences might be strung up on top and guarded".
Sometime around Nov. 19, 1942 Oppenheimer showed Groves the Los Alamos Boy's School, and Groves decided that would be the location for "Site Y". It was isolated, there were some structures in place, and, while not in a bowl, it was on top of a mesa which made it defensible. Therefore, it was a full 13 1/2 months and change between the last known operation of the Chili Line and the time that Los Alamos was picked as the location of the research and engineering labs for the Manhattan Project.
Dec. 2, 1942 Chicago Pile #1 went critical demonstrating controlled fission for the first time in history. At that time, nuclear research in this country was focused in that squash court in Chicago and in Berkley.
Oppenheimer moved to Santa Fe on March 15, 1943. It wouldn't be until April that people started moving into Los Alamos - 19 months after the last recorded run on the Chili line.
Uranium ore (yellowcake) was processed at the sprawling facilities at Oak Ridge, TN and the concentrated U235 brought to Los Alamos by car.
Plutonium was produced in reactors located in Hanford WA, and the purified plutonium was also brought in to Los Alamos by car.
So, Los Alamos was nothing more than a boys school when the line was abandoned - hardly a reason to keep the line intact. It was more than a year between the time that the last train ran and the birth of the Manhattan Project, and several months more before Los Alamos was designated as being the research center for that project. If we assume that scrapping started in Santa Fe (ensuring the D&RGW would have access to whatever useful material there might be - like rail) the Santa Fe - Otowi portion would have been the first to go. If they started in the middle, say at Embudo and worked toward the ends, there was still over a year to pull up the tracks
before the Manhattan Project even existed.
But we still don't have any proof of exactly when the line was pulled up. At the same time, there is no reason for them to have hesitated either.
It's a really cool idea that the Chili Line played a role in the Manhattan Project, and had it lasted a year, who knows, they might have tried to build a rail line up to Los Alamos (which would have been one HECK of a challenge!!!). But there's no reason to think they kept it intact, even if there's no evidence they did, in fact, scrap it in 1942. However we do know that it was - for sure - scrapped at some point.
Don
Refs: "Chili Line - the Narrow Rail Trail to Santa Fe" by John A. Gjevre
"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2008 09:26AM by Don Richter.
ecret Chili Line, Where are Pro and Con Facts?
