Oak Ridge gatehouses

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.

[1] A station on Bethel Valley Road controlled access to the "X-10" site in Bethel Valley, where Oak Ridge National Laboratory is located;[2] a station on Scarboro Road near Bear Creek Road controlled access to the Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility in Bear Creek Valley;[3] 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.

[6] In 1999, the 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.

[7] 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 the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, Kentucky.

[7] The two restored gatehouses are now fitted with period and replica furniture from the 1940s and 1950s and decorated with historic photographs by Ed Westcott.