"I hadn't heard that before," said resident Phyllis Anderson, 88. "We'd have been a lot different place if that had happened."

She said she relishes the open spaces of Oak City. She lived in the South for a while and couldn't wait to return to where she was born.

If Oak City had been selected, it might have worked out well given pilots and crew of the B-29 that dropped atomic bombs on Japan secretly trained just 120 miles to the northwest in Wendover, Utah.

But the controversy of later atomic testing in Nevada and its harmful downwind effect on southern Utah residents might have started farther north if Oak City had been selected. It's possible that Utah's west desert area or an adjacent part of Nevada might have replaced what is now known as the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico — about 200 miles from Los Alamos — as the place where the first-ever atomic bomb was detonated. Had that been the case, more atomic testing would have probably taken place near Utah. On the other hand, the Los Alamos Laboratory has pumped billions of dollars into that state's economy and has provided thousands of additional jobs.

For more information on the history of Los Alamos, go to www.lanl.gov/history/road/choosing-site.shtml.

Contributing: Joan K. Shipley

E-mail: lynn@desnews.com