The Atom Comes to Town

When the news hit, the telephone operators in Arco's one-room exchange above the Dee Hotel plugged in every line in Butte County, ringing telephones all up & down the Big Lost River Valley. A man from Pocatello, who had just been offered a one-story building for $10,000, walked across the street to look at another site. When he got back, he found the price had jumped to $17,500. Soon, jalopies were pounding into town and Arco's streets were jammed with jubilant wheat farmers and ranchers, shouting, cheering and recklessly counting their future wealth. The Atomic Energy Commission had just announced that the U.S.'s first nuclear reactor testing station would be built on 400,000 acres of desert southeast of town.

Lost River. The site itself has more jackrabbits than humans. Sharp cinder cones and bare-ribbed buttes thrust out of stone-black lava flows. The Big Lost River sinks without a trace into its black, broken ground. The place is 20 miles from the Craters of the Moon, 90 miles from the River of No Return. Except for 20,000 acres of desert grazing land, the government holds title to the entire area.

In the next ten years, AEC expects to spend some $500,000.000--an amount roughly equal to the entire assessed value of the state. The Arco station will become the chief testing ground for the industrial development of atomic energy, including such projects as ship and aircraft propulsion by atomic power.

Last week the pitted, single-lane oi. road to Pocatello bustled with more traffic than Arco had seen for years. Speculators from as far away as Boise bid for lots that had long lain unsold at $10. "We don't want to gouge anyone," protested Realtor Ora Jones. But a lot opposite the Dee, which is the town's only hotel, jumped from $2,000 to $18,000. Said one Pocatellan: "The jackrabbits up there have 'For Sale' signs over their holes."

Found: Problem. Mayor Winfield Scott Marvel, who is also Arco's undertaker and paperhanger, began worrying about such big-city problems as labor unions, jails, and sewage (Arco now uses septic tanks). Other nearby towns caught the atomic fever, began figuring on their share of atomic prosperity. The mayor of Pocatello (pop. 30,000) expansively predicted a population of 100,000 in three years. A poolroom owner refused $70,000 for his place ("That's when two fools met," commented Idaho Congressman John Sanborn).

A little alarmed by the excitement, AEC warned that there would be relatively few workers at first, 6,000 construction workers at peak, only 2,000 permanent settlers after building was complete. But Arco (and Idaho) went right on dreaming of factories in the desert, and daily passenger trains to replace the single coach-and-baggage-car that now shuttles along the Union Pacific spur to Blackfoot.

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