Elza, Tennessee

Guards searching a car at the Elza gate (photo by Ed Westcott)

Elza was a community in Anderson County, Tennessee, that existed before 1942. The area was taken over for the Manhattan Project. It is now part of the city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Manhattan Project

When the federal government looked at sites for the Manhattan Project buildings that ultimately were sited at Oak Ridge, the Oak Ridge site was described in internal memos as "near Elza."^[1] During World War II, Elza was the site of one of the security gates on the borders of the then-closed city of Oak Ridge. It was on the road from Clinton to Oak Ridge.

Community legacy

The Luther Brannon House, built in 1941, was a surviving structure associated with the Elza community.^[2]

During World War II and for some time after, the Manhattan Engineer District and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission used several warehouses in the Elza area for storage of uranium ore and other materials. In the early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Energy cleaned up the site, where soil had been found to be contaminated by PCBs and uranium.^[3]

References

1. Memo from Z. V. Deutsch to E. V. Murphree Archived 2012-10-14 at the Wayback Machine, April 29, 1942,
2. Historic and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, July 1991. Section F, page 2.
3. T. J. Vitkus and T. L. Bright, Verification Survey of the Elza Gate Site, Oak Ridge, Tennessee Archived 2017-01-07 at the Wayback Machine, ORISE 92/L-30. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, December 1992.