Atomic City, Idaho

United States &gt; Idaho &gt; Bingham County &gt; Atomic City

City Hall
Gerry Hawley, City Clerk P. O. Box 64 Atomic City, ID 83215 208.684.3585

Directories
The Idaho State Archives in Boise has a collection of city, county, regional and state directories.

History
Originally, the town was known as Midway, because it was midway between Blackfoot and Arco. Atomic City, located on US Highway 26 just south of the Idaho National Laboratory in northwestern Bingham County, is only a step or two from being a ghost town these days. Northwest of Atomic City on US Highway 26 is the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, the first place on Earth where atomic energy was successfully harvested for the production of electricity (4-200 watt light bulbs). The reactor was actually designed to validate a theory that suggested a breeder reactor was possible. The reactor first went critical on August 24, 1951 but it wasn't until 1953 that experiments confirmed the reactor was producing new fissionable material. Then on November 29, 1955, the reactor suffered a partial meltdown that was later attributed to operator error. The reactor was repaired and ran more experiments until it was officially shut down and deactivated in 1964. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and is still open to the public between Memorial Day and Labor.

Newspapers
Copies of issues of some Atomic City newspapers are in the collections of the Idaho State Archives in Boise.