The Pine Gardens Defense Community was established in 1942 to provide attractive, affordable housing for workers of the Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation, whose labor built Liberty Ships, merchant vessels produced inexpensively and efficiently to support the war effort during World War II. The neighborhood was planned as a complete community with a shopping plaza, fire station, and churches, and although it was originally designed as a 500 housing-unit development, an annex was later added. In 1953, the Eli Whitney School was built to educate Pine Gardens students. After the war, workers were given the option to purchase the homes they had been renting. Today, Pine Gardens remains one of Georgia’s largest intact defense communities and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.