Five unpaved county roads traversed the ninety-two square miles of depleted valleys and scrub-oak ridges, an area seventeen miles long and seven miles wide that supported only about a thousand families in rural poverty. In the ridge-barricaded valleys of this impoverished hill country, far from prying eyes, the United States Army intended to construct the futuristic factories that would separate U235 from U238 in quantity sufficient to make an atomic bomb.
