The Department of Energy has developed and made available to the public--in print, online, and on display--a variety of Manhattan Project historical resources. These include histories, websites, reports and document collections, and exhibits and tours.
Histories produced by the Department include The Manhattan Project, which provides a brief overview, and the longer, at 100 pages including the 35 page "Photo Gallery," The Manhattan Project: Making of the Atomic Bomb. These for the most part non-technical, highly readable accounts are geared toward the general reader. Published in 1962, The New World, 1939-1946, was the first major Manhattan Project history. As Volume 1 of the official History of the Atomic Energy Commission series, The New World used both unclassified and still-classified source materials and revealed much that previously had not been disclosed. The New World and the U.S. Army Center of Military History's Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb released in 1985 remain the best detailed published accounts of the Manhattan Project.and are available at major libraries.
In August 2005, the Department published online a partially completed version of The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History. Intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the Manhattan Project, the finished website would contain five main topical areas—Events, People, Places, Processes, and Science—which would be further divided into sub-sections, each with an introductory page and as many as a dozen or more sub-pages. The Events and Resources sections were the first to go up. When completed, The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History will total some 120,000 words and over 200 pages. The finished site is schedule to go online in late 2013. The partially completed version of The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History, which is being updated, currently is not available online. An additional source for information on the Manhattan Project can be found on the history site of the Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Department continues to release declassified Manhattan Project-related reports and documents on its OpenNet website. This searchable database includes bibliographical references to all documents declassified and made publicly available after October 1, 1994. Some documents can be viewed full text. Unclassified and declassified Manhattan Project records collection can be accessed at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The core administrative records of the Manhattan Engineer District (MED) came out of Oak Ridge, Tennesee, and have been transferred to NARA's Southeast Region located in Atlanta. Also at Atlanta are unclassified/declassified MED operational division and other Oak Ridge records. Classified MED records were sent to NARA headquarters (Archives II in College Park).
The Department supports a number of Manhattan Project-related exhibits and public tours. In 2007, the Department opened a permanent Manhattan Project exhibit as the cornerstone of the 30th anniversary lobby renovation at the Department's Forrestal headquarters building in Washington, D.C. Major permanent Manhattan Project exhibits also are on display at the Department's American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge and the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, New Mexico. At the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Department offers public tours of the B Reactor and other historical properties on the site. At Oak Ridge, the Department's public tours visit the X-10 Graphite Reactor and drive around the perimeter of the K-25 Plant.