Gatekeeper to Los Alamos: Dorothy Scarritt McKibbin

In March 1943 Dorothy Scarritt McKibbin took a position that catapulted her into the center of the Manhattan Project. Her office, 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe New Mexico, was the entry point for all scientists, technicians, and their families who came to Los Alamos, an isolated mesa in north-central New Mexico, to build a "gadget" that would change the course of World War II. They also built a community where people attempted to lead ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances. Dorothy, a rare combination of gentility and fire, was a powerful civilizing influence for those individuals. She was their one contact with the world beyond "the Hill," a world that did not know of their existence.