Edith Warner

Warner's influence on the morale and overall attitude of the people there has been noted and written about by various journalists and historians, including several books about her life, a stage play, a photography exhibition, an opera, and a dance.

The previous station manager for the "Chili Line" stop of the local railway that was located at the school, Adam Martinez, had decided to leave the town and now the position was left vacant.

This made her grow closer to the locals, including Peggy Pond Church, the daughter of the founder of the Los Alamos Ranch School, and also had her become an intimate friend with a Native American wanderer named Tilano Montoya from the San Ildefonso Pueblo.

[8] Things changed for all residents of the town when World War II began, as the school land and many of the residential homes were taken over by the United States military in 1941 so that the plateau would be vacated and could be used as a base for work on the Manhattan Project.

With that closure, Warner tried to continue operating the tea room out of her residence, but the tourist trade to the plateau ended completely due to the site being locked up as a military installation.

A lack of income forced her to consider having to move back to Pennsylvania, but Robert Oppenheimer, a frequent attendee of her tea room since 1937, convinced her to stay and reconfigure her business directly toward the on-site scientists.

In order to accommodate the constant stream of evening customers, for which she charged a general $2 a person, an extra expanded dining room was added on to the house for more seating arrangements.

[1] Church donated her personal papers to the University of New Mexico in 1980 and, from these, editor Shelley Armitage published a collection of these writings through Texas Tech titled Bones Incandescent, which heavily features Warner.

[2] A photography exhibition on Warner and her life was revealed at the Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis on May 20–21, 1995 as a part of a broader multimedia installation titled "Critical Mass".