The Girls of Atomic City

“As for her for her new employment and soon-to-be home, ‘secret’ was the operative word. It was repeated frequently, and rendered the most innocuous questions audaciously nosy.” 

Celia’s experiences provide the reader with an initial insight into life at CEW. Knowledge restricted and compartmentalized, and any effort to find out more about one’s role, no matter how innocent, was treated with extreme suspicion.

“So many locals soon found themselves applying for work at the project that had evicted them in the first place. Reduced to renters and wage earners, these displaced people would work at Site X, on lands they once held as their own.” 

The creation of CEW had a serious impact on the original residents of the site. Having previously been relatively independent homeowners and farmers, they found themselves turned off their land, often with very little warning and inadequate compensation. Faced with the loss of their lifestyles, they frequently had little choice but to seek employment at CEW itself. 

“As the reservation grew and the newcomers settled in, he would portray Site X as the Project envisioned it, and as those who traveled there wanted it to be. He snapped the rising town’s pioneering spirit and the expressions of newfound camaraderie among those for whom family and home were far away.” 

James Edward “Ed” Wescott, an unknown 21-year-old, landed the role of the Project’s official photographer. He had a great deal of access and took photos intended to reflect the Project’s vision of CEW. As such, his early photographs portrayed a sense of wartime spirit and “making do” that suggest at the beginnings of a new community.