Boomtown - The Secret History of America's World War I Chemical Weapons Program and the Poison Left Beneath the Capital

The hidden history of America's first chemical weapons program—and the decades-long fight to expose it.

Beneath one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Washington, DC, lies a forgotten battlefield. During World War I, the United States launched a vast and secret chemical weapons program on the grounds of what is now American University and the surrounding Spring Valley neighborhood. It was the largest scientific enterprise in the world prior to the Manhattan Project. Nobel laureates and members of the National Academies of Sciences rushed to develop new weapons capable of reshaping the battlefield.

When the war ended, the program disappeared from public memory. Its toxic legacy did not.

Burial pits filled with munitions and experimental chemicals were left behind. Contaminated soil remained in place. Testing grounds were quietly transformed into residential streets, manicured lawns, and university buildings. For decades, federal agencies insisted the past had been safely contained. But as startling discoveries emerged—from unearthed munitions to evidence of chemical contamination—an unsettling possibility took shape: the truth had never been fully told.

In Boomtown, Rob Gordon uncovers the extraordinary story of America's earliest chemical warfare program and the decades-long effort to bury its history. Drawing on archival discoveries, whistleblower accounts, and his own years of investigation, Gordon reveals grisly testing programs, secret weapons research, and a pattern of concealment by the very agencies responsible for protecting the public.

As the narrative goes deeper, a gripping story unfolds—one that links wartime scientific ambition with modern-day questions of contamination, accountability, and the limits of government transparency. Part investigative exposé and part real-life thriller, Boomtown uncovers a hidden chapter of American history that was never meant to come to light.