(WBIR - OAK RIDGE) On Tuesday, the National Park Service signs were already up throughout Oak Ridge as leaders in Washington, D.C., officially signed the paperwork to establish a park for the Manhattan Project.
The Manhattan Project National Historical Park will consist of sites in New Mexico, Washington state, and Oak Ridge that helped develop the first atomic bomb in World War II.
"Today is the birthday of this new national park," said Niki Nicholas, the NPS superintendent at Big South Fork. "The National Park Service serves as the nation's storytellers. This is definitely a story that was historic and changed the world."
Long gone are the days when Oak Ridge was a secret city hidden behind military gates. Now it will be an official tourist destination on the national map.
In addition to her duties at Big South Fork, Nicholas is helping establish the Manhattan Project park in Oak Ridge. Tuesday she was working to set up a NPS office at the American Museum of Science and Energy (AMSE) in Oak Ridge. The museum will serve as the National Park Service's initial headquarters to staff a park ranger in Oak Ridge.
The early days of the new park will require some self-guided tours.
"The park is really just getting started. At first, people coming to the park in Oak Ridge will start by coming to our visitor contact station [at AMSE]," said Nicholas. "This is where people can talk with the rangers and learn about the Manhattan Project. It's also where we'll have handouts to show all of the historic places people can go throughout the town. The whole city was a part of the Manhattan Project."
"It's going to be a hub-and-spokes approach where you go to the hub at the American Museum of Science and Energy. Then it's like you'll have a menu of places around town you can visit and the rangers can help you learn about those places and plan your trip," said Tom Beehan, former mayor of Oak Ridge who was in office during the effort to establish a national park for the Manhattan Project.
The availability of park rangers will slowly grow in the next few months. For the remainder of 2015, the NPS will only operate in Oak Ridge on Saturdays. By the end of January, rangers will work at the AMSE five days a week from Thursdays through Mondays. Sometime in the spring of 2016, the NPS hopes to have park rangers scheduled seven days a week.
While the AMSE will serve as the hub in Oak Ridge, events and educational sessions will be scheduled at locations throughout the city.
"We're going to have things at the Children's Museum and several other places," said Beehan. "This is something that will really have people going throughout the area and we'll have the nation's best storytellers here to tell it in a way that is accurate and fair to everyone. The National Park Service has the expertise to make this phenomenal."
"As time goes on, there will be more National Park Service presence throughout the town," said Nicholas. "There are so many fascinating topics we'll be able to approach like the role of children inside a secret city. People were coming from all over the country to work here, not being able to tell their families what they were doing. Not being able, even husband and wife, to talk about what they're doing at work. When you walk down the streets of Oak Ridge, this is where a huge change of our time occurred."
"You're going to have to think about what it was like to keep a secret," said Beehan. "We're trying to recreate to get you to think about what those times were like and how important this city and other cities were to the history of the Manhattan Project. There are lots of stories to be told, from the bad of the bomb killing people, to the good of ending the war, and all of the other ways this affected scientific research in the decades since the Manhattan Project ended."
There are two official events scheduled for Thursday, November 12, 2015, in Oak Ridge. The first is a dedication ceremony at 2:00 p.m. at Oak Ridge High School's auditorium. Then there will be a celebration at Jackson Square at 4:00 p.m. where they will attempt to recreate an iconic photograph from 1945 in Oak Ridge when the war ended.
The list of historic attractions around Oak Ridge to include on the NPS tour is still a work in progress, but here are some of the early sites to make the list:
- Visitor Center Passport Stamping Site, AMSE
- U.S. Department of Energy Public Tour, starting at AMSE
- New Hope Center (Y-12 history center)
- Oak Ridge International Friendship Bell
- Secret City Commemorative Walk
- Historic Alexander Inn "Guest House"
- Historic Jackson Square
- Birth of a City monuments
