1943

In 1943, while fierce fighting raged at Stalingrad, in North Africa, and in the South Pacific, February brought groundbreaking for Oak Ridge’s Y-12 Plant and the X-10 Graphite Reactor, and on April 1 armed guards began manning the gates to the Clinton Engineer Works. President Roosevelt froze all wages and prices to forestall black markets, and by summer the area swarmed with 20,000 construction workers building the plants and the new city. In August, the town’s first drug store, grocery, movie theater, and post office opened, and in the fall enough of Y-12 and the town had been completed that scientists, engineers, and thousands of support people began pouring in from across the nation. A universal complaint was the mud, as even a light shower turned thinly graveled streets into a gooey mess, so the town answered with 163 miles of boardwalks. For fun, people went to the movies, bowled, danced in the rec halls, and sometimes on the tennis courts. Overseas, Allied forces finally defeated the Germans in North Africa but began the invasion of Italy with heavy losses.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee · United States