Lost Communities of Tennessee: Wheat
Updated: Feb 27, 2023
Driving down Gallahar Road, the connector highway between the cities of Kingston and Oak Ridge, one might pay attention to this sparsely populated expanse. It is adorned only with a few, albeit sprawling neighborhoods and a large, semi-abandoned industrial park. However, one building stands starkly against the desolate backdrop: a small white church, standing proudly on a wooded hill with an adjoining graveyard. It is off-theme compared to the rest of the area; it is much, much older than any construction near it. The most peculiar thing about it is perhaps the most haunting: its doors do not open on Sunday mornings, at least not anymore. To the casual viewer, this is just a plain old country church. Little do they know that this is the last standing remnant of a thriving community, a community that was forced out of existence for the progress of a war unlike any that the world had previously seen. This church, George Jones Memorial Baptist, is the last of Wheat, and this is this story of the community it called home.
Wheat was first settled in the late 1700s and thrived as a prosperous farming community. However, after the Civil War, its economic tide shifted as it became a logging mecca, giving it its first name Bald Hill, Tennessee (coined due to the “bald” appearance of the logged aftermath of the hills). In 1881, its name was changed to its final iteration, named after its postmaster Henry Franklin “Frank” Wheat. The community grew to include stores, schools, churches, mills, a filling station, a Masonic Lodge, a seminary, a college, and, of course, the residences of around one-thousand families. It even had seven well-known peach orchards at one point; its fruits were shipped all across the country.
Yet this prosperity was to come to an abrupt halt. Though no change was apparent when the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1941, something unprecedented was just around the corner. In November of 1942, families living in Wheat received a notice from the United States Government giving them less than one month to vacate their land in exchange for a measly lump sum of money. Families frantically gathered their belongings and equipment to beat the deadline, most having nothing more than a horse and buggy to haul their belongings. Despite many desperate pleas to the government for a change in decision or at least a little more time, by the end of 1942, Wheat was no longer. Approximately 3,000 individuals were displaced, most likely more. Every farm, every home, every memory were all lost to sands of time and human progress. The mysterious reason why - the Manhattan Project. It was an endeavor unlike anything ever seen before in the world’s history. Its goal - to build an atomic bomb, a weapon that could harness the power of the sun, a weapon that could, and did, end a war. Yet progress is not always kind to the communities left in its wake.
There is something so bittersweet about the story of this ill-fated community. Many families of Wheat descendants, including my own, still live in the Roane County area, living legacies of a prosperous community that is slowly being lost to the pages of history. Driving down Gallahar, one might stop at the roadside plaque commemorating it, to take it in and remember the bygone and fading Wheat community.
Sources:
“K-25 Virtual Museum - Life in Happy Valley - Wheat Community.” K-25 Virtual Museum,
UCOR, k-25virtualmuseum.org/happy-valley/wheat.html.
Kiernan, Denise, The Girls of Atomic City, Touchstone, 2013
Clark, Patricia and Jordan Reed, “ORICL Panel, Part 2: Wheat Community - The Way We Were:
Pre-Oak Ridge and Early Oak Ridge.” Oak Ridge Public Library Digital Collections, Oak Ridge Public Library, http://coroh.oakridgetn.gov/corohfiles/Transcripts_and_photos
/Wheat_community_panel/Wheat_transcript_formatted.docx
Huotari, John, “Did You Know? Wheat Was Famous for Its Peach Orchards.” Oak Ridge Today,
chards/
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