abstract
| - The construction workers for the K-25 and other plants were housed in a community known as Happy Valley. Built by the Army in 1943, the temporary Happy Valley community housed 15,000 people in trailer homes. The town of Oak Ridge was established to house the production staff. The operating force peaked at 50,000 workers just after the end of the war. The construction labour force peak was 75,000 and the combined employment peak was 80,000. Developed by the federal government as a segregated community, black residents lived only in an area known as Gamble Valley, in government-built "hutments" (one-room shacks) on the south side of what is now Tuskegee Drive. Ken Nichols the MED Deputy District Engineer from June 1942 and District Engineer from August 1943 was responsible for the Clinton and Hanford production “semiworks”, and their houses were of a higher quality than those approved by Groves at Los Alamos. He moved the Manhattan District headquarters from Manhattan, New York to CEW in August 1943. In 1954 Nichols transferred responsibility for coordinating supply of feed materials for both Oak Ridge and Hanford to Oak Ridge from New York, as with only two plants "the need for coordination had essentially been eliminated (but) as usual in government operations, no one wanted to take the onus of telling employees they no longer are needed."
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