Los Alamos - New Mexico - Culture

Los Alamos is located in Northern New Mexico about 35 miles northwest of Santa Fe.

In general terms, Los Alamos has a temperate mountain climate with four distinct seasons. Spring tends to be windy and dry. Summer begins with warm, often dry, conditions in June, followed by a two-month rainy season. Autumn offers drier, cooler, and calmer weather. Winter brings cold, sunny days and enough storms to keep the ground (not roads) covered with snow for about two months.

If you approach Bandelier from the east, you'll pass Los Alamos National Laboratory, the main US center for the research and development of nuclear weapons (as well as neurobiology, computer science and solar and geothermal energy). Virtually all the work at this, one of the foremost scientific research establishments in the world, is military-based, and consequently most of the complex is off limits – the small and over-simplified Bradbury Science Museum (Tues–Fri 9am–5pm, Sat–Mon 1–5pm; free) is the only part you can visit. What's both remarkable and unnerving about the place is that the people who work here seem oblivious to the fact that not everybody has learned to love the Bomb. The local radio station is called KBOM, and museum guides glow with excitement as they describe their weapons' devastating power. Judging by the visitors' register, a sizeable percentage of visitors come here as a sort of pilgrimage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.