How Manhattan Built Ridgecrest: The New York Story Hiding in Our Backyard

Ask anybody in town why Ridgecrest exists and you'll get the same answer: the base. That's the right answer. China Lake is the reason there's a Home Depot on China Lake Boulevard instead of a whole lot of nothing.

Here's the part almost nobody knows. The money that built the base's runway, the housing that kicked off our first population boom, and the most historic mission this valley ever carried out all came from a project named after a neighborhood in New York City.

I'm not stretching for a headline here. This is documented history, and it's a better story than most of what you'll find in a museum gift shop. Let me walk you through it.

The Manhattan Project was actually named after Manhattan

Most people assume "Manhattan Project" was a random codename the Army pulled out of a helmet. It wasn't.

In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers set up the atomic bomb program's first offices on the 18th floor of 270 Broadway in lower Manhattan, a few steps from New York City Hall. The Corps had a habit of naming its engineer districts after the city where they were headquartered. The program's original name was the "Development of Substitute Materials," which General Leslie Groves thought sounded suspicious enough to draw attention. So he followed standard practice and called it the Manhattan Engineer District. People shortened it to the Manhattan Project, and the name stuck even after the headquarters moved to Tennessee.

That building at 270 Broadway is still standing today. It's condos and office space now. The people living there probably have no idea their address is the reason the most famous codename in American history sounds like a real estate listing.

So that's the New York end of the story. Now let's come home.

The Navy shows up in the Mojave

In 1943, the Navy established the Naval Ordnance Test Station near the dried-up bed of China Lake and the little town of Inyokern. The mission was rockets. Caltech had been developing them for the war effort, and the Navy needed somewhere with clear skies nearly year-round, endless open land, and nobody around to complain about explosions. Sound familiar? That's our valley.

The town that would become Ridgecrest was barely a dot on the map back then. A handful of homesteads, some alfalfa, a lot of dirt. Everything that happened next changed that permanently.

Project Camel: the bomb work nobody talked about

Los Alamos was building the atomic bomb, but they had problems. They needed somewhere to test bomb shapes dropped from B-29s. They needed detonators. And they needed a plant to manufacture the high-explosive components that made the implosion bomb work, because their own explosives facility was, in General Groves' words, like one of those firecracker plants you read about blowing up every once in a while.

The answer to all three problems was right here.

All the atomic bomb work done at China Lake ran under the codename Project Camel. The name came from a Los Alamos scientist's crack that once a camel gets its nose under the tent flap, it's hard to dislodge. The camel was Caltech. Apparently the Los Alamos crowd thought the Caltech folks were a little pushy. Some things about academia never change.

Here's what Project Camel actually did in our valley:

• Built the runway. Manhattan Project money paid for a brand-new airfield at China Lake with three runways, the longest at 10,000 feet, built wide and strong enough to handle the B-29 Superfortress. It opened June 1, 1945, and was named Armitage Field after Navy Lieutenant John Armitage, who was killed testing a Tiny Tim rocket here in 1944. Every time you hear jet noise over Ridgecrest, you're hearing the descendant of that investment.
• Dropped practice atomic bombs over the valley. Project Camel flew B-29 airdrops of model atomic bombs so scientists could calibrate how the real ones would fall. Read that again. Test shapes for the weapons that ended World War II were falling out of the sky over the Indian Wells Valley while most of the country had no idea any of this existed.
• Built the Salt Wells Pilot Plant. This is the big one. Salt Wells manufactured the non-nuclear explosive components of atomic bombs. The plant went from bare desert to pouring its first explosives on July 25, 1945, twelve days before Hiroshima. Between 1945 and 1954, Salt Wells produced explosive components for the Fat Man bomb and the Mark 4, Mark 5, and Mark 12 weapons that followed. It also helped train the workers who staffed the plants in Iowa and Texas that took over the job.

The boom that made Ridgecrest a town

The war ended, but the work didn't. The Atomic Energy Commission took over from the Manhattan Project in 1947 and promptly spent $3.25 million on 380 sets of family quarters, plus streets, electricity, sewers, water mains, and a small school. They named the school after General Groves, and it opened in 1948. By 1949, the Salt Wells plant alone employed more than 700 people.

Families need groceries, haircuts, churches, and hardware stores. The community outside the gate grew to serve them, and in 1963 that community incorporated as the City of Ridgecrest. The chain of events is direct: a project named after a New York borough funded the buildout that turned a desert crossroads into the town where my kids went to school.

Why this story matters

I sell houses here, and I talk to a lot of people relocating for work at China Lake. Almost every one of them asks some version of the same question: what is this place, really?

This is the answer. Ridgecrest isn't a town that happens to sit next to a base. Ridgecrest is a town that was called into existence by some of the most consequential science of the twentieth century, and it never stopped doing that work. Sidewinder was invented here. Weapons systems that protected American pilots for seventy years were designed and proven over these ranges. The opening scenes of Top Gun: Maverick were filmed on this base. The through-line runs straight back to an office tower at Broadway and Chambers Street, 2,500 miles away.

Next time somebody from back east tells you Ridgecrest is in the middle of nowhere, you tell them Manhattan built this place. Then watch their face while you explain it.

One more New York connection, just for fun

The F-14 Tomcat, the jet Tom Cruise made famous, was built by Grumman on Long Island, New York. Its most famous weapon, the Sidewinder missile, was invented right here at China Lake, and the Tomcat's live-fire missile testing happened over our ranges in the 1970s. Today one of the very first Tomcats ever built sits on the deck of the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan.

New York built the jet. Ridgecrest built the missile and proved the system. The whole story is parked on the Hudson River where eight million people walk past it. Small world. Small valley. Big history.

Scott K. Miller is a REALTOR® and Area Leader with Epique Realty serving Ridgecrest, Inyokern, Trona, and the Indian Wells Valley. Questions about the area, the market, or making the move to China Lake? Call or text 760-264-3501, email scottmiller@epique.me, or visit homeswithscottkmiller.com. CA DRE #02152150.