The Elza Gate

The Army gave the reservation an ambiguous name, the Clinton Engineering Works, and made everyone entering carry a pass and a purpose. The Clinch River wrapped three sides of the 59,000 acres, and a fence patrolled by armed guards closed the exposed north. Inside, security staff tried to keep scientists and engineers on different pieces of the project from talking to one another. Knoxville, thirty miles away, supplied labor but was kept at a distance. The secrecy outlasted the war and marked the town through the Cold War.

What the plaque says

The Elza Gate From April 1, 1943, until March 19, 1949, this was the site of Elza Gate. Elza Gate was the primary entrance to the secret community of Oak Ridge and along with six other entry points, it was manned by armed guards. Elza Gate took its name from a local community that predated Oak Ridge.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Museum of Science and Energy — 3.4 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 — 5.4 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.
• Museum of Appalachia — 12 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.
• Norris Dam and Norris Dam State Park — 14 mi
  TVA's first dam, finished in 1936 on the Clinch River, and the state park beside it with the 1798 Rice Grist Mill, built for a valley whose families were moved out.

More markers nearby

• First Integrated Public Schools in the Southeast — 3.1 mi
• Oak Ridge — 3.7 mi
• David Hall Cabin — 3.8 mi
• The Scarboro Community — 4.1 mi