The Suburb Without the Urb

Perched in remote splendor on a 7,300-ft. mesa between New Mexico's Jemez Mountains and the Pojoaque Valley, Los Alamos has neither rich nor poor among its 15,000 inhabitants.

It has no unemployment, practically no crime, few old people. It does have one big boss: the U.S. Government, which largely owns the city and is responsible for most of its payroll. Last week the residents of Los Alamos prepared for the community's greatest upheaval since it was founded in 1942 for the purpose of designing and producing the world's first atomic bombs. Beginning next month, the Atomic Energy Commission will help Los Alamos toward independence by selling off $39 million worth of Government-owned homes, apartments, stores and vacant tracts of land.

The first beneficiaries of the sale will be the residents of Los Alamos. Up to now, they could own little property in the city, have paid the U.S. between $69 and $186 a month to rent their duplexes and single homes. They will be given first choice in buying their current residences at prices as much as 25% below recently appraised values. Not for sale: the massive scientific laboratories, where half the research is still devoted to atomic weaponry, half to peaceful applications of the atom.

Paternalism & Subsidization. Despite their windfall, Los Alamos' new owners may have difficulty adjusting to life without Government paternalism. The Zia Co., which the AEC helped set up to maintain Los Alamos homes and neighborhoods at no cost to the residents, will go out of business, leaving homeowners to make their own repairs and mow their own lawns. Owners will also have to begin paying real estate taxes to the city of Los Alamos, which hopes eventually to attract private business and achieve a stable economy of its own. To smooth its path toward financial independence, the U.S. is donating Government-owned schools, a hospital and municipal buildings worth millions, will spend $1,000,000 to improve local utilities and will grant other subsidies to the city.

Although population and building booms are expected in labor-short Los Alamos as a result of the sale, the town will retain the unique character imposed on it by its atomic industry. On its Los Alamos payroll of 3,700 people --virtually the entire community labor force--the AEC employs 478 Ph.D.s, 316 people with M.S. degrees and 618 with B.S. degrees. This concentration of intellect has pressured Los Alamos schools into keeping pace by adopting advanced curriculums, has placed a premium on educational excellence. Los Alamos children have heredity and environment on their side even before they start school. "They seem to be under some compulsion to get their education finished before they fool around with any of the problems of puberty," says School Superintendent C. W. Richard. Police records bear him out. There is practically no juvenile delinquency in Los Alamos.

Pretty Dreary Sin. The Government laboratories' good pay scales--professionals average $12,000 and 72% of other employees earn more than $5,000 a year--also make poverty unknown in Los Alamos. Most families have two cars and could afford better housing if it were available. Because of their comfortable incomes, uniform backgrounds and treelined, planned neighborhoods, some Los Alamos citizens have referred to their community as "a suburb without an urb to be sub to."

It is 37 miles from Santa Fe, the nearest large city, has half a dozen modest bars but few other entertainment facilities. To amuse themselves, Los Alamos residents have formed a disproportionately large number of social clubs (which concentrate on such specialized activities as bird watching, chess and classical music), also hike, ride--200 families own horses--and read extensively. Says Unitarian Minister Robert Lehman: "It is a self-conscious model town where such sin as exists is pretty dreary."

Although they helped create the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and have subsequently produced hundreds of weapons capable of unprecedented destruction, the citizens of Los Alamos are neither self-conscious nor guilt-ridden about their role. They are also remarkably unconcerned about living in a city that would be a prime target in any war, and in which megaton-range weapons are produced within sight of their front doors. This sense of detachment, caused more by geography than psychology, extends even to world events. While Los Alamos residents become passionately involved in local controversies and conservation drives, they are notably uncommunicative about Viet Nam, foreign policy and threats of nuclear war.

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