Last updated: March 26, 2025
Place
Oak Ridge Wayside: Middletown Trailer Park
NPS
Quick Facts
Amenities
1 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits
Subtitle
Housing for an Expanding Workforce
Main Text
Housing the 75,000 Manhattan Project workers and residents came with challenges, including a shortage of building materials and construction workers. Solutions were found: the use of alternative building materials such as gypsum board instead of wood for walls of the Alphabet Houses and providing less permanent accommodations for lower wage employees. Plant workers, guards, firefighters, clerical personnel, construction workers and others earning less than $60 per week were assigned to the most temporary of housing, trailers and hutments. African American workers were further segregated within the hutments, separate from the hutment area for single white men.
Nearly 4,000 trailers formed dense communities here in present-day A.K. Bissell Park, along Oak Ridge Turnpike and Illinois Avenue, in Gamble Valley, and near K-25. Like other housing areas, the trailer camps had stores, theaters, cafeterias, recreation and community buildings, and schools. Residents used shared bathhouses for showers, water collection (residents filled a tank in their trailer daily, and the trailers had no bathrooms) and other needs. Most trailers were government owned and transferred to the project from other government agencies such as Tennessee Valley Authority. Many of the trailers had been relocated by 1947.
Exhibit Panel Decsription
A black and white exhibit panel on a brown frame approximately four feet tall. The panel has a black band at the top and a title underneath that reads "Middletown Trailer Park: Housing for an Expanding Workforce." The center of the panel is covered by a black and white aerial photo of a trailer park. The text is at the bottom of the panel.
Visit This Exhibit Panel
This exhibit panel is located in AK Bissell Park in Oak Ridge, TN.
Housing for an Expanding Workforce
Main Text
Housing the 75,000 Manhattan Project workers and residents came with challenges, including a shortage of building materials and construction workers. Solutions were found: the use of alternative building materials such as gypsum board instead of wood for walls of the Alphabet Houses and providing less permanent accommodations for lower wage employees. Plant workers, guards, firefighters, clerical personnel, construction workers and others earning less than $60 per week were assigned to the most temporary of housing, trailers and hutments. African American workers were further segregated within the hutments, separate from the hutment area for single white men.
Nearly 4,000 trailers formed dense communities here in present-day A.K. Bissell Park, along Oak Ridge Turnpike and Illinois Avenue, in Gamble Valley, and near K-25. Like other housing areas, the trailer camps had stores, theaters, cafeterias, recreation and community buildings, and schools. Residents used shared bathhouses for showers, water collection (residents filled a tank in their trailer daily, and the trailers had no bathrooms) and other needs. Most trailers were government owned and transferred to the project from other government agencies such as Tennessee Valley Authority. Many of the trailers had been relocated by 1947.
Exhibit Panel Decsription
A black and white exhibit panel on a brown frame approximately four feet tall. The panel has a black band at the top and a title underneath that reads "Middletown Trailer Park: Housing for an Expanding Workforce." The center of the panel is covered by a black and white aerial photo of a trailer park. The text is at the bottom of the panel.
Visit This Exhibit Panel
This exhibit panel is located in AK Bissell Park in Oak Ridge, TN.