The Department of Energy, in the mid-1990s, developed a list of eight Manhattan Project properties that were designated as "Signature Facilities." These properties, taken together, provided the essential core for successfully interpreting for the American public the Manhattan Project mission of developing an atomic bomb. The Department's goal was to move foward in preserving and interpreting these properties by integrating departmental headquarters and field activities and joining in a working partnership with all interested outside entities, organizations, and individuals, including Congress, state and local governments, the Department's contractors, and various other stakeholders.
These Manhattan properties are first-of-a-kind or one-of-a-kind facilities and devices that used some of the century's most innovative and revolutionary technologies. Hanford's B Reactor, which created the plutonium for the Trinity device, was the world's first production reactor. Scientists and engineers designed the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge to use a totally untested and unproved technology. The Y-12 Beta-3 Racetracks, the only surviving World War II-era elctromagnetic isotope separations equipment in the world, still stand, complete with operator panels and telephone switchboard, almost exactly as they did during the war. The other Signature Facilities are: the Metallurgical Laboratory, the X-10 Graphite Reactor, the T Plant Chemical Separations Building, the V-Site Assembly Building/Gun Site, and the Trinity Site. Two of the facilities--the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago and the Trinity Site on the White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico--are not owned by the Department. The other six are the Department's direct responsibility.
At the Department's request, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in 2001 convened a panel of distinguished historic preservation experts who visited the Signature Facilities, evaluated their historical significance, and developed recommendations and preservation options for the Department's consideration. In its final report to the Secretary of Energy, the panel unanimously agreed with the Department that the Signature Facilities are of extraordinary historical significance and stated that they "deserve commemoration as national treasures." Not only do they qualify as national landmark status properties, the panel concluded, they are also of World Heritage Site significance. The report urged the Department to support efforts to convey to DOE employees, contractors, and the public the powerful story of the role the Signature Facilities played in one of the paramount events of the twentieth century.
The eight Signature Facilities of the Manhattan Project are: