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    Oak Ridge
    Oak Ridge
    Oak Ridge
    Ebook174 pages48 minutes

    Oak Ridge

    By Ed Westcott

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    About this ebook

    Oak Ridge is nestled in the foothills of East Tennessee, 25 miles west of Knoxville. Bordered on three sides by the Clinch River, the land first existed under other names--Elza, Robertsville, Scarboro, and Wheat--and became part of the Clinton Engineering Works later known as Oak Ridge. In 1942, 59,000 acres of land were transformed in a matter of weeks into a "secret city" that became known as the mysterious Manhattan District. As a direct result of the letter written by Albert Einstein to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, the Manhattan District was created to develop new atomic weapons. Finally named Oak Ridge in 1943 and now thriving with a population of over 27,000, the town continues to be a significant center for the advancement of science and technology used throughout the world. In this pictorial history, photographs and personal descriptions guide readers on a visual journey of the construction of a city and the creation of the atomic bomb, to the post-war transformation of Oak Ridge into a major scientific community in the South.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439633281
    Oak Ridge
    Author

    Ed Westcott

    Author and photographic historian Ed Westcott is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the city of Oak Ridge. From his first assignment by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to make the aerial photographs of the mountains and valleys that led to the selection of the Oak Ridge site by the government, to the photographic documentation of the building of the city and the atomic factories, Ed has photographed every aspect of the construction and community life in Oak Ridge for over 63 years.

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      Book preview

      Oak Ridge - Ed Westcott

      1908.

      INTRODUCTION

      Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is located in the Anderson County portion of the valley of East Tennessee and covers approximately 92 of the county’s 450 square miles. Settlement did not begin in earnest until the county was established in 1801.

      Significant change first came to the region in 1838 with the dislocation of the Cherokees, but Native Americans were not the only people to be dislocated; 100 years later, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was born, and 2,900 families from the county were displaced in order to build the first TVA hydroelectric dam at Norris. Many relocated to the valley, which was bordered on three sides by the Clinch River. Homes, farms, and businesses were re-established and eventually became part of communities such as Wheat, Robertsville, Elza, and Scarboro.

      The dislocation to the southern portion of Anderson County provided a comfortable distance for the relocated families for a while, but in 1942, government land appraisers once again appeared and began the hasty removal of close to 1,000 families in order to begin a secret war effort for the federal government.

      The area selected was considered marginal farmland, consisting of many large Victorian homes, barns, frame houses, and log cabins. By November 1, 1942, all of the landowners had received notices of condemnation ordering them to vacate no later than January 1, 1943. It was an extreme hardship for the families to be given just two months to find another home, especially with the scarcity of building materials due to war rationing, but move they did, as their homes, farms, and businesses were erased and the area was transformed into an industrial community with 75,000 people within two years’ time.

      I’ve seen it.... It’s coming, said Tennessee backwoods mystic John Hendrix in the early 20th century. Hendrix was describing the monumental changes that he had predicted would eventually descend upon the quiet valleys and ridges of Anderson County. John made no predictions about the dates that these visions would occur, but, true to his prophecies, monumental changes did occur in 1942, as the land began to transform from rolling hills and valleys into factories and a secret city.

      Hendrix’s visions and prophecies included the prediction that there would be a city built on the Black Oak Ridge and that the valley would contain factory buildings that would help towards winning the greatest war that ever was or ever will be. Most of the folks living in the small communities considered the predictions made by Hendrix as just stories from his own imagination—certainly not prophecies or visions that would change life as they knew it. But true to Hendrix’s visions, life did change for the families in the area, just as change also came to the nation and world as the result of the Manhattan Project’s contributions to the building of the atomic bomb and the ending of World War II.

      Oak Ridge represents a photographic history of the building of a city from the groundbreaking in 1942 up through the completion of the city. Most of the photographs provided for this book were made in the 1943–1945 period in order to chronicle one of the world’s most significant engineering feats, the equivalent of building a Panama Canal once each year for three straight years.

      The author’s first introduction to Oak Ridge came in 1942, when he was selected to create the Photographic Unit for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in an area first referred to as the Kingston Demolition Range, which became the Corps of Engineer’s Manhattan District/ Clinton Engineer Works and eventually the city of Oak Ridge. Ed Westcott was 20 when he accepted the transfer from Nashville to Knoxville and was the 29th employee to arrive. No one had any suspicion that the sole purpose of the Manhattan Project was to produce the atomic bomb, but as the official photographer, Westcott was directed to create a photographic history of everything significant within the project from the town and factory construction to public-relations events and everyday life in the community.

      In January 1943, the northeast corner of the Manhattan Project reservation was set aside for the town of Oak Ridge. The town was to be located entirely within Anderson County in a valley between two parallel ridges. The area consisted of a slender strip of wooded land approximately one-and-a-half miles wide and seven miles long. The town occupied 9,000 of the 59,000 total reservation acres.

      Over the span of those few short years, Westcott photographed the birth of a city that included massive engineering factories and plants, one of which (K-25) covered 44 acres under one roof, for the purpose of producing enriched uranium to be used for the explosive core of the atomic bomb. Westcott’s photographs included the construction of 3,050 homes, thousands of dormitories, hutments, apartments, barracks, and other residential buildings, schools, medical facilities, shopping and recreation centers, libraries, 300 miles of roads and streets, and 163 miles of wooden sidewalks.

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