By Leslie Agron and Pat Fain
“This Island Earth” is a classic 1950s sci-fi flick. Its gifts to the popular culture include the “interocitor” (an all-purpose communicator and weapon) and the origin of the sound bite “They’re pulling us up!” In it we learn not only that we are not alone, but that we are not even remotely enough located to stay uninvolved in cosmic conflicts.
Oak Ridge in the early 1950s was a remotely located, somewhat self-sufficient compound. It had been built that way intentionally by Gen. Groves in the 1940s. Nearly everyone who worked here also lived here because the government had made sure to offer them suitable rental housing.
The seeds of change were sown in the mid-1950s with the sale of those government-owned homes and the enactment of Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. As the interstates were built and the region grew a little closer, a few people began to commute to jobs in Oak Ridge.
As the 1970s and 1980s progressed, West Knoxville blossomed, and Pellissippi Parkway was built.
