OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE

  

Hidden Within the Southern Pines

 

 by Alex Hutchins



Early Construction of the K-25 uranium enrichment facility (background), with one of original houses of Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the foreground, in 1942. That year, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began quickly acquiring land in the Oak Ridge area, at the request of the U.S. government, to build production facilities for the Manhattan Project. The K-25 plant, when completed, was the largest building in the world for a time. (Ed Westcott/DOE)



Starting in 1942, the U.S. government began quietly acquiring more than 60,000 acres in Eastern Tennessee for the Manhattan Project -- the secret World War II program that developed the atomic bomb. The government needed land to build massive facilities to refine and develop nuclear materials for these new weapons, without attracting the attention of enemy spies. The result was a secret town named Oak Ridge that housed tens of thousands of workers and their families. The entire town and facility were fenced in, with armed guards posted at all entries.

Oak Ridge's Grove Theater shows "The Beginning or The End" in March of 1947. (Ed Westcott/DOE)

Workers were sworn to secrecy and only informed of the specific tasks they needed to perform. Most were unaware of the exact nature of their final product until the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945. Photographer Ed Westcott (the only authorized photographer on the facility) took many photos of Oak Ridge during the war years and afterwards, capturing construction, scientific experiments, military maneuvers, and everyday life in a 1940s company town (where the company happens to be the U.S. government).

Oak Ridge's X-10 graphite reactor, in 1947. X-10 was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor (after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile) and was the first reactor designed and built for continuous operation. (DOE)

Gladys Owens, a "Calutron Girl"  who worked for eight months operating the massive electromagnetic separation machines in "Beta 2" of Y-12 without knowing more than if she wore pins in her hair that the machines she operated would pull them out and stick them like glue to any metal surface she came near.  She still, 60 years later, recalls the words told her at the conclusion of her training to work at Y-12: "We cannot tell you what you are going to do, but we can tell you how to do it and we can only tell you that if our enemies achieve what we are attempting before we do, God help us!”



Lie detection tests were administered as part of security screening (U.S. Department of Energy)



From 1942 until 1949, Oak Ridge a city of 75,000 people did not exist on ANY map.  The 100,000 people working here to both build and operate the world's first successful uranium separation facilities were locked in a battle with Germany and Japan, although they did not specifically know exactly what the true nature of the "battle" was, they only knew THEY HAD TO WIN IT.    



A billboard posted in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on December 31, 1943. (Ed Westcott/DOE)

 1943, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, then known only as the Clinton Engineering Works, was conspicuously absent from any map. On 60,000 acres of farmland framed by the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, it was one of the United States' three secret cities—remote sites chosen by Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves, evacuated of their civilian inhabitants, and developed for the specific purpose of producing an atomic bomb.  The men and women of the Clinton Engineering Works would help provide the material for the bomb.



Calutron operators at their panels, in the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II. The calutrons were used to refine uranium ore into fissile material. During the Manhattan Project effort to construct an atomic explosive, workers toiled in secrecy, with no idea to what end their labors were directed. Gladys Owens, the woman seated in the foreground, did not realize what she had been doing until seeing this photo in a public tour of the facility fifty years later. (Ed Westcott/DOE)



The Clinton Engineering Works opened its gates to the public in 1949, and was renamed Oak Ridge; today, its residents are keenly aware of their atomic heritage. The city is home to two of the most advanced neutron science research centers in the world, and the government is still the area's major employer.

A caultron "racetrack" uranium refinery at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during the Manhattan Project. The light-colored bars along the top are solid silver. (Ed Westcott/DOE)

Much of what originally brought people to Oak Ridge can still be seen: three of four plants used to produce material for the atomic bomb survive. These buildings are within 30 minutes of the city center, on what are today the sites of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Department of Energy East Tennessee Technology Park, and the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer at Oak Ridge, on February 14, 1946. Oppenheimer was called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role as the head of the secret weapons laboratory of the Manhattan Project. (Ed Westcott/DOE)

Today, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is completely immersed in research and development activities, as you can see by clicking on the above link; and, it is the home of ORAU, Oak Ridge Associated Universities.  

Temporary Housing (Hutments) fill the formerly empty valleys of Oak Ridge in 1945. The sudden growth of the military's facilities caused the local population to grow from about 3,000 in 1942 to about 75,000 in 1945. (Ed Westcott/DOE)

ORAU provides innovative solutions to strengthen and secure America which is done by leveraging a network of strategic partnerships with government, universities, and industry. 

Shift change at the Y-12 uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge. Notice the billboard: "Make CEW count Continue to protect project information." CEW stands for Clinton Engineer Works, the Army name for the production facility. (Ed Westcott/US Department of Energy)



ORAU, together with their customers and partners, are answering critical national needs for better education, more responsive healthcare, a safer and cleaner environment, and advances in science and technology to strengthen America’s competitiveness. Applying these capabilities, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) also manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.

 This 1945 photograph shows the giant 44 acre K-25 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the uranium for the first atomic weapon was produced. (AP Photo/U.S. Department of Energy)