Residents move for Savannah River Site

Web posted Tuesday, November 14, 2000

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By Melissa Hall
Staff Writer

The change came easily for Betty Youmans Greene. Hers was the last class to graduate from the Ellenton School, and she had already planned to go to college in Columbia.

So in 1952, when the Atomic Energy Commission officially claimed more than 200,000 acres in Aiken and Barnwell counties to build Savannah River Site, her bags were packed and she was ready to go.

In June, former residents of Ellenton, Dunbarton and Meyers Mill met in several planned reunions. The former residents, numbering about 6,000, were displaced by what was then Savannah River Plant and were forced to relocate and sell their homes, farms and businesses to the federal government.

At the Ellenton get-together in June, 175 people gathered at Silver Bluff High School for the 28th annual reunion to remember the town they called home.

Ellenton reunion attendees were given fans with printed photos of the town at the reunion Sunday at Silver Bluff High School Sunday afternoon. Ellenton was the largest town to be wiped off the map in 1950 by the creation of the Savannah River Site. MICHAEL HOLAHAN/STAFF

For Mrs. Greene, the town may be gone, but her memories remain. She vividly remembers life on her father's 1,600-acre farm, where he grew cotton, watermelon, corn, grain and oats and raised hogs and mules. And in a way, she is glad her father died before the change took place. He would not have found it easy to sell the farm where he had toiled for so many years, she said.

``For the land owners and the property owners, it was a devastating thing because there was nothing else for them to do,'' said Jack Harden, a former Ellenton resident. ``The government just came in and condemned their property. They paid them and turned them loose on their own.''

But even today, Ellenton continues to provide dividends for Mrs. Greene. As head of the reunion that is held each second Sunday in June, she has gained many new friends, those with shared experiences and fond remembrances of the home they left 50 years ago.

Some still call it home, even though they haven't lived there since 1952, when Ellenton, a town of 739 residents, became another generic bit of piney woods among the 310 square miles of Savannah River Site.

The government - which spent $19 million buying land and relocating residents - has put a monument and a couple of benches at the now-wooded corner of U.S. Highway 78 and what was Ellenton's Main Street.

The loss of Ellenton was a price paid in the top-secret plan to build a massive nuclear bomb plant near Aiken.

``I want you to know that I consider this project one of highest urgency,'' President Harry Truman wrote that summer in a confidential letter to the president of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

The chemical giant was selected to build and operate Savannah River Plant, where tritium, plutonium and other vital nuclear weapons ingredients were manufactured. The $1 billion project was the government's most costly defense undertaking at the time.

Officials from the Atomic Energy Commission and DuPont broke the news about the plant to residents Nov. 28, 1950.

``Rather than being upset, I looked at it as a big adventure,'' said Mr. Harden, who was 16 when the news broke. ``From the first day it was announced, it was a big adventure. On Sunday, everyone was too poor to do anything except walk the streets. Then after they announced this, you couldn't walk across the street for the cars. It was like Disney Land or a California freeway. As Yogi Berra always said, `When you come to a fork in the road, take it,' and that was just one fork in the road for me. But it was really devastating to a lot of people.''

Betty Greene, President of the Ellenton Reunion, stands near a display of historic Ellenton items while addressing the audience at the Ellenton reunion at Silver Bluff High School Sunday afternoon. Ellenton was the larges town to be wiped off the map in 1950 by the creation of the Savannah River Site. MICHAEL HOLAHAN/STAFF

Construction of five large nuclear reactors and other defense material factories would begin immediately. Almost 1,500 families in seven communities had 18 months to relocate.

Ellenton, Dunbarton, Meyers Mill, Hawthorne, Robbins, Leigh and Sleepy Hollow were soon gone. Thousands of high-paying jobs boosted the economies of nearby Aiken and Augusta and in time made locals into some of the nation's most ardent nuclear defense supporters.

A hand-printed piece of cardboard tied to a sign at an Ellenton thoroughfare - and captured by a DuPont photographer in the early 1950s - illustrated the mixed feelings locals were wrestling with at the time.

``It's hard to understand why our town must be destroyed to make a bomb that will destroy someone else's town that they love as much as we love ours,'' the sign read. ``But we feel that they picked not only just the best spot in the U.S. but in the whole world.''

A musical based on that relocation, I Don't Live There Anymore, was recently performed at the Etherredge Center at the University of South Carolina Aiken and at the College of Charleston.

``Instead of protesting the loss of their homes and their way of life, the people of Ellenton decided by petition to give up their town as a measure of gratitude to their country,'' wrote musical producer Julie Holofcener in a description of the musical. ``It's about how ordinary people cope with remote political decisions, something which ordinary people do in every town, in every country all over the world.''

By the evacuation deadline, construction workers had arrived by the thousands to settle in temporary trailer cities lining the plant boundaries. Some slept in tents because of the severe housing shortage. In June 1951, 8,000 plant workers were on the site. In September of the next year, their numbers had surged to 38,600. From across the Southeast and beyond, people arrived in Aiken, Barnwell and Allendale counties looking for work.

Many local residents joined the plant's work force, amazed to see their cotton fields and peach groves transformed in a matter of a few years. By the time the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, more than 25,000 people were employed at the plant. But since the end of the Cold War, employment at the nuclear reservation has scaled back to about 14,000 as local and federal officials work to bring new missions to SRS.

Reach Melissa Hall at (706) 868-1222, Ext. 113, or melhall@augustachronicle.com.

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