Oak Ridge

Before the town existed, about a thousand farm families, some four thousand people, lived around crossroads called Wheat, Elza, Scarboro and Robertsville. In fall 1942 some were told to leave by notices nailed to their fence posts. Eviction was complete a year later, a few residents went to court over the prices, and some who had farmed the land for generations held a grudge for decades. Anderson County gave up one-seventh of its land. State Highway 61, which ran through the site, was closed and rerouted north.

What the plaque says

Oak Ridge In 1943, Oak Ridge was created as the residential center for the Clinton Engineering Works. Located on the northeast corner of a 59,000-acre reservation acquired by the government in 1942, the community was designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Architects. In 1945, Oak Ridge reached a peak population of 75,000. On January 1, 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission assumed control of the community. In 1959, Oak Ridge became an incorporated municipality.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Museum of Science and Energy — 2.2 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 8.8 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Historic Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary — 15 mi
  The coal-mining prison opened in 1896 after the Coal Creek War ended convict leasing, where James Earl Ray escaped in 1977, now a tourist site and distillery.
• Museum of Appalachia — 16 mi
  John Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.

More markers nearby

• Freels Bend Cabin — 2.8 mi
• The Scarboro Community — 3.7 mi
• The Elza Gate — 3.7 mi
• David Hall Cabin — 5.1 mi