Elza was a community in

Anderson County, Tennessee Anderson County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is located in the northern part of the state in East Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 77,123. Its county seat ...

, that existed before 1942, when the area was acquired for the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

. Its site is now part of the city of

Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson County, Tennessee, Anderson and Roane County, Tennessee, Roane counties in the East Tennessee, eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, Knoxville. Oak Ridge's po ...

History

Elza formed around a flagstop on the

Louisville and Nashville Railroad The Louisville and Nashville Railroad , commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States. Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of ...

. The community had a country store but no post office, instead receiving mail through the nearby community of Dossett., National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, July 1991. Section E, page 5. The community's name was derived from the surname of a railroad construction engineer named Paul Elza. Construction materials for a bridge over the

Clinch River The Clinch River is a river that flows southwest for more than through the Great Appalachian Valley in the U.S. states of Virginia and Tennessee, gathering various tributaries, including the Powell River, before joining the Tennessee River in ...

and an underpass near Dossett were marked "Elza" and were delivered to a shed near the railroad tracks. William "Fiddlin' Bill" Sievers, an early

country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

guitarist and member of the Tennessee Ramblers band, was born in the Elza area in 1875.Charles Wolfe
The Tennessee Ramblers: Ramblin' On
." ''Old Time Music'', Summer 1974, pp. 5-11. Retrieved: 17 December 2008.

Manhattan Project

When the federal government evaluated sites for the Manhattan Project facilities that ultimately were sited at Oak Ridge, the Oak Ridge site was described in internal memos as "near Elza." During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Elza was the site of one of the security gates on the borders of the

closed city A closed city or town is a settlement where travel or residency restrictions are applied. Historically, the construction of closed cities became increasingly common after the beginning of the Cold War, particularly in the Soviet Union. Since t ...

of Oak Ridge. Located on the road from Clinton to Oak Ridge, the Elza gate was "the busiest and most public" of Oak Ridge's entrance gates. When the Oak Ridge townsite was first opened to outsiders in 1949, the gate-opening ceremony was conducted at the Elza gate.

Community legacy

The Luther Brannon House, built in 1941 and razed in 2021, was a surviving structure associated with the Elza community., National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, July 1991. Section F, page 2. During World War II and for some time thereafter, the Manhattan Engineer District and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission used several warehouses in the Elza area for storage of

uranium ore Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the most common Chemical element, elements in Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than ...

and other materials. In the early 1990s, the

U.S. Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear we ...

cleaned up the site, where soil had been found to be contaminated by PCBs and

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

.T. J. Vitkus and T. L. Bright
Verification Survey of the Elza Gate Site, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
, ORISE 92/L-30. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, December 1992.

References

External links

60th-anniversary commemoration of the opening of Elza Gate, March 2009
(YouTube video) {{coord, 36.052579, -84.202976, display=title Geography of Anderson County, Tennessee Oak Ridge, Tennessee