The original school building was in eastern Oak Ridge on the hill above the community's first commercial center at Jackson Square.

[2] The schools' mascot and colors were selected in 1943 by Ben Martin, who was athletic director (1943–1971) and coached football (1943–1947), basketball (1943–1959), and track (1944–1965).

On September 6, 1955, it became the first high school in the southern United States to integrate after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

[6] The integration of Oak Ridge High School was the result of a January 1955 directive by the Atomic Energy Commission.

Oak Ridge High School underwent extensive reconstruction, starting in 2005 and completed in 2008, to update its facilities, incorporate significant energy-conserving features, and construct newer, better equipped learning areas.

It received several awards, including a Citation Award from the American Association of School Administrators, recognition as a Green Project of Distinction Winner in the 2008 Green Education Design Showcase, and a 2009 Learning by Design Citation of Excellence from the American School Board Journal.

[11] On April 10, 2006, the incident led to Oak Ridge High School receiving a Jefferson Muzzle Award, issued annually by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression to focus attention on free speech and First Amendment violations in the United States.

[citation needed] The Oak Ridge High School cross country teams have won a total of 14 state championships: 8 for boys and 6 for girls.

[16] In 2005, Oak Ridge sent a group of three seniors to the national finals of the Siemens Competition, where they finished fourth for their work in Natural language processing.

During the first week of December 2006, three seniors from ORHS presented[17] their research on alternate fuel sources and won first place nationally.

[citation needed] In 2011, Seniors Cassee Cain and Ziyuan Liu won the Siemens Competition for their work using an Xbox Kinect to analyze the walking patterns of people with prosthetics.

[31] In March 2013, The Secret City Wildbots FIRST Robotics Competition team in their second year won the Smokey Mountain Regional in Knoxville, TN, along with the Hardin Valley Academy RoHAWKtics and Halls High School Red Nation, and proceeded to the FIRST Championship in St.