Three ECA communities named American World War II Heritage Cities

Today, the National Park Service announced that three ECA member communities were chosen to be designated as an American World War II Heritage City.

The City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Tri-Cities, Washington were each honored for their contributions that shaped the U.S. home front during World War II and that still impact our country today.

Oak Ridge was built under a cloak of secrecy by the federal government during World War II as a major site of the Manhattan Project, the massive wartime effort that produced the world’s first atomic weapons. In 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bought an estimated 60,000 acres of rural farmland to construct a "temporary" city and three facilities to develop the technology that helped to end the war.

In Los Alamos, scientists, engineers, technicians, military, and support personnel worked on the unprecedented, top secret World War II government program in which the United States hastened to develop and deploy atomic weapons that brought about the end of the war.

Workers also built three nuclear reactors along the Columbia River – each the size of a small city. One of the three busiest facilities during the war, Naval Air Station Pasco, now the Tri-Cities Airport, trained new pilots for combat and retrained established pilots on new aircraft. 

ECA congratulates each recipient for this honorable designation!