State Secrets

There will be a huge factory in Bear Creek Valley that will help win the greatest war there will ever be.”

—“Prophet” John Hendrix, Bear Creek Valley, Tennessee, 1900

During John Hendrix’s lifetime (1865-1915), Bear Creek Valley was a secluded, East Tennessee farming community with little connection to the outside world. The valley’s remote location likely made Hendrix’s prediction about a “huge factory” seem all the more preposterous to his fellow homesteaders. As it turned out, location played a huge role in making his vision come true.

Hendrix was a mystic, an eccentric figure who once spent 40 nights sleeping in the woods. It was during this time, according to local tradition, that he experienced his revelation about the land and its connection to a future war. This part of his story was shared in subsequent years by Hendrix’s relatives and neighbors. The next chapter was written more than 25 years after Hendrix’s death. That’s when the United States govern-ment began searching for a remote area with an ample water supply to build (at the time of its construction in 1943) the largest industrial complex in history.

In 1942, the Hendrix family farm was among the 59,000 acres the government purchased to rapidly construct the “Secret City” of Oak Ridge. The massive, top-secret undertaking—code named “the Manhattan Project”—displaced the roughly 1,000 rural families who lived in Bear Creek Valley and the small Clinch River communities of Elza, Robertsville, Scarborough, and Wheat. In their place rose a built-from-scratch city of 75,000 new residents. Most of the new arrivals were members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and young, skilled workers—including architects, cooks, scientists, steelworkers, stenographers, and woodworkers. Except for a select group of high-level scientists and government officials, few knew that they had been recruited to the hills of East Tennessee to help build the world’s first atomic bomb.

See Where Science Made History

Oak Ridge’s Secret City story is one of three told through one of the nation’s newest national parks, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park (Manhattan Project NHP). Established in November 2015, the park is composed of the three principal Manhattan Project locations: Oak Ridge; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. A fourth location—the park headquarters—will be built in Denver, Colorado.

In addition to having multiple units spread across the country, the Manhattan Project NHP stands apart from other national parks by being co-managed by the National Park Service (NPS) and the Department of Energy (DOE). Since the DOE owns, operates, and maintains the buildings and land within the park, the main role of the NPS is to interpret and share the extraordinary Manhattan Project story. Since the park is brand new, the foundation documents are yet to be finalized. Some programs, such as ranger-led bus and walking tours, lectures, a Junior Ranger program, and community outreach activities, are up and running. Additional programming will be added in the coming months, says Frank Graham, the acting lead ranger of the Oak Ridge unit of the Manhattan Project NHP.

“The story told at the Manhattan Project NHP Oak Ridge unit will go from prior to the city being there, through the development of the Secret City and the science that went on during World War II, and on to the period after the war through today,” says Graham. “That story includes the continuing development of nuclear energy and the science that comes out of that, along with the building of the atomic bomb, which was the result of the Manhattan Project.”

Graham readily acknowledges that interpreting the history of the atomic bomb for the general public comes with challenges. The story, which includes the realities of war and the destruction caused by nuclear weapons, covers complex topics and an unprecedented time in our nation’s history.

“The park service doesn’t shy away from tough issues,” he says. “There are parks that talk about slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans, and POWs [prisoners or war]. This park talks about the first atomic bomb [which included enriched uranium produced at Oak Ridge] dropped on Hiroshima and causing the deaths of 100,000 Japanese people in a very short period of time.”

According to Graham, one goal of the Manhattan Project NHP is to tell the story from both a Japanese and an American perspective. “We have to take into consideration what that time period was like. It was called a ‘world war’ for a reason,” he says. “The whole world was involved, and tens of thousands of people were being killed in a variety of ways. In most people’s opinion, the success of the Manhattan Project is what ended World War II. That wouldn’t have happened without Oak Ridge.”

Decoding the Secret City

The American Museum of Science & Energy (AMSE), headquarters of the Manhattan Project NHP, features the walk-through exhibit “Oak Ridge: World War II Secret City.”

Plan on spending at least two hours at the museum absorbing the memorabilia, photographs, and artifacts—including news reels from the 1930s and 40s—that trace the history of the atomic bomb and tell the story of Oak Ridge. Stop at the NPS visitor desk located just inside the front door to pick up a brochure, as well as walking and driving maps to other Oak Ridge Manhattan Project sites. amse.org.

More to Explore

• Read The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II (Touchstone/Simon & Shuster, 2013), author and journalist Denise Kiernan’s best-selling book based on her intensive interviews with 10 women who worked on the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s.
• K-25 was the code name of the massive gaseous diffusion plant built in Oak Ridge to enrich uranium for the first atomic bomb (code name: “Little Boy”). The plant recently was demolished, but the K-25 Virtual Museum preserves the history of the facility’s contri-butions to the war effort as well as to defense, energy, and technology through the 1990s in this online compendium. k-25virtualmuseum.org.
• In the Oak Ridge Public Library’s Oak Ridge Room, learn about life in the Secret City during the Manhattan Project through the oral histories and personal accounts of the people who were there. The library also has a collection of early Oak Ridge photographs taken by Ed Westcott, the Atomic Energy Commission’s official photographer. oakridgetn.gov/department/library/reference/oak-ridge-room.

Secret City 411

1. Check nps.gov/mapr for the latest national park events and updates.

2. Reservations are required for the guided DOE Public Bus Tour, which departs from the AMSE and includes highlights of Oak Ridge past and present. Check the bus schedule and register for the tour online at the AMSE website, amse.org. Or, register in person (first come, first served) beginning at 9 a.m. on the day of your visit.

3. A valid photo ID is required to register for the bus tour.

4. The $5 AMSE admission fee includes the bus tour (space permitting).

5. The bus tour begins at 11:30 a.m. and lasts at least two and a half hours. Eat a big breakfast or early lunch beforehand.

6. Large bags and backpacks are not allowed on the bus.