The breathtaking scenery compensated in part for the utilitarian ugliness of the town. “We could gaze beyond the town, fenced in by steel wire,” wrote Bernice Brode, the wife of physicist Robert Brode, “and watch the seasons come and go—the aspens turning gold in the fall against the dark evergreens; blizzards piling up snow in winter; the pale green of spring buds; and the dry desert wind whistling through the pines in summer. It was surely a touch of genius to establish our strange town on the mesa top, although many sensible people sensibly said that Los Alamos was a city that never should
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