Oak Ridge Gatehouses - History

History

The three gatehouses were built c. 1948-1949 and went into service on March 19, 1949, when the residential and commercial portion of Oak Ridge, known as the "townsite," was opened to public access. During World War II and until 1949, the entire Oak Ridge area had been enclosed by a fence and was restricted. Access was controlled at seven security gates equipped with wooden guardhouses. In 1949, access restrictions on the Oak Ridge townsite were eliminated. At that time, the three checking stations went into use to control access between the townsite and the AEC facilities. A station on Bethel Valley Road controlled access to the "X-10" site in Bethel Valley, where Oak Ridge National Laboratory is located; a station on Scarboro Road near Bear Creek Road controlled access to the Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility in Bear Creek Valley; and a station on Oak Ridge Turnpike (now part of Tennessee State Route 95) controlled access to the K-25 site uranium enrichment facility near the Clinch River in western Oak Ridge.

The structures were used for their intended purpose until 1953 when the gates to each of the three government sites were relocated to the specific sites. The three white Gatehouses remained in federal government ownership for many years, but stood vacant. In 1992, they were listed on the National Register as three separate properties, identified as the Oak Ridge Turnpike Checking Station, Bear Creek Road Checking Station, and Bethel Valley Road Checking Station. All three were included in a larger Multiple Property Submission for Oak Ridge-related properties. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the AEC-successor agency that currently controls the Bear Creek Road and Oak Ridge Turnpike properties, as well as the small structure on the Bethel Valley property, restored the large structures at the checking stations at the Oak Ridge Turnpike and Bear Creek Road sites. The large structure at the Bethel Valley Road site belongs to Lockheed Martin who obtained it with the Commerce Park property in 1984 when Martin Marietta took over the managing and operating contract for the three DOE sites in Oak Ridge as well as Portsmouth, Ohio and Paducah, KY. The Bethel Valley Road large structure was painted in 2005 but there has been no restoration or other attention to the interiors of the two Bethel Valley structures and the small structures at the other sites.