Editing Oak City, Utah (section)

==The A-Bomb Project==
Oak City in [[Millard County, Utah|Millard County]] was the search director's first choice for the atomic weapons laboratory. Maj. John Dudley of the [[Manhattan District]] Staff was assigned to survey the West and find potential sites for an atomic laboratory in October 1942. His first choice for the laboratory site was Oak City, Utah, according to the [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]] history. "It was a delightful little oasis in south central Utah," Dudley wrote. "The railroad was only 16 miles away over a nice, easy road. The airport was not too distant. The water supply was good. It was surrounded by hills, and beyond there was mostly desert. However, I noticed one thing: If we took over this area we would evict several dozen families and we would also take a large amount of farm acreage out of production."{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

Because of the potential loss of farmland, Dudley recommended his second choice — [[Jemez Springs, New Mexico]]. In the end, Dudley's choice was overruled by [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]], a physicist and the scientific director of the [[Manhattan Project]]. He favored Los Alamos.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.lanl.gov/history/road/choosing-site.shtml.|title = Our History}}</ref>