Join a park ranger for a walk through the pre-Manhattan Project community of Wheat on Saturday, September 14.
Wheat was in what is now west Oak Ridge, around the area of Heritage Center, the former K-25 site. It was one of several local communities displaced by the Manhattan Project, a top-secret federal program to build the world’s first atomic weapons during World War II.
Oak Ridge and two other sites involved in the Manhattan Project—Hanford, Washington, and Los Alamos, New Mexico—are now part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.
The Manhattan Project National Historical Park will present the free Walk through Wheat program. The program will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, September 14, at Blair Road and the North Boundary Greenway. The walk will be about 1.5 miles, so wear comfortable walking shoes and bring water to drink, a press release said. Stops will include “downtown” Wheat, George Jones Memorial Baptist Church, Roane College site, and the Crawford Cumberland Presbyterian Memorial. There will be stories about the development and significance of each site, the press release said.
Wheat is located on Blair Road 0.3 miles off the Oak Ridge Turnpike, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If you need directions, information is available at the National Park Service desk in the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge or call (865) 482-1942.
Visitors are encouraged to visit the website for more information on the park at https://www.nps.gov/mapr/oakridge.htm. Follow the park on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ManhattanProjectNPS, on the park’s Twitter feed at @MnhtnProjectNPS, or on Instagram @manhattanprojectnps.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
You can contact John Huotari, owner and publisher of Oak Ridge Today, at (865) 951-9692 or john.huotari@oakridgetoday.com.
Most news stories on Oak Ridge Today are free, brought to you by Oak Ridge Today with help from our advertisers, sponsors, and subscribers. This is a free story. Thank you to our advertisers, sponsors, and subscribers. You can see what we cover here.
Do you appreciate this story or our work in general? If so, please consider a monthly subscription to Oak Ridge Today. See our Subscribe page here. Thank you for reading Oak Ridge Today.
Copyright 2019 Oak Ridge Today. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Leave a Reply