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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Joe Holt

Construction WorkerHanford, WA

B Reactor/100 Area
Manhattan Project VeteranProject Worker/Staff
Hanford Listen to Joe Holt’s Oral History on Voices of the Manhattan Project

They called him "Honey Joe" because of his bee business, which he went into after he left Hanford. DuPont transferred Holt from a construction job in Indiana to Hanford in 1943. At Hanford, Holt worked building the B reactor and laying graphite. Holt settled with his wife Lois in a large and handsome brown house on the side of a hill above the Yakima River on the west edge of Richland. The other big construction job of Holt's life was the Golden Gate Bridge. He quit the bridge in 1937 before completion because he didn't like the foggy, cold weather, and he got nervous after ten bridge workers died when a scaf­fold collapsed and they fell into the Golden Gate.

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