Oak Ridge is the mysterious city the federal government built as part of the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb in the early 1940s. The once-top-secret Graphite Nuclear Reactor, the world's first, is now a national landmark and can be visited. Take time to see the American Museum of Science and Energy, which showcases past energy developments and speculates on the future. For a glimpse of what it was like to live in a place that did not officially exist, don't miss the museum's Oak Ridge Story exhibit. (Truck drivers had trouble delivering packages to Oak Ridge because it wasn't on any road maps.) Oak Ridge is 20 mi/32 km west of Knoxville.
