Oak Ridge High School (Oak Ridge, Tennessee)
| Oak Ridge High School | |
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| Location | |
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Oak Ridge, Tennessee United States |
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| Information | |
| Type | Public secondary |
| Established | 1943 |
| Principal | Martin McDonald |
| Grades | 9–12 |
| Enrollment | 1,458 (2013) |
| Mascot | Wildcats |
| Newspaper | The Oak Leaf |
| Yearbook | The Oak Log |
| Website | highschool.ortn.edu |
Oak Ridge High School is the public high school for Oak Ridge, Tennessee, enrolling grades 9 through 12. It was established in 1943 to educate the children of Manhattan Project workers.
Oak Ridge High School was established in 1943 by the U.S. Army to educate children of the workers building and operating Manhattan Project facilities in Oak Ridge. The original school building was in eastern Oak Ridge on the hill above the community's first commercial center at Jackson Square. The school's football venue, Jack Armstrong Stadium and Blankenship Field, is adjacent to the original site of the school.
The schools' mascot and colors were selected in 1943 by Ben Martin, who was athletic director (1943-1971) and coached football (1943-1947), basketball (1943-1959), and track (1944-1965). As a graduate and former athlete at the University of Kentucky, Martin adopted Kentucky's "Wildcats" as the ORHS mascot. He chose cardinal red and gray as the school colors to emulate the successful sports programs at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport, Tennessee.
The high school moved to its current central location in Oak Ridge in 1951 after a new state-of-the-art campus was built under the auspices of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which then operated Oak Ridge and its public schools. The new school, which had a capacity of about 1500 students and cost $2,980,000 to build, consisted of four buildings (designated "A", "B," "C", and "D") in two groups, connected by an enclosed glass corridor. The auditorium had a seating capacity of 1400 and was intended to serve the community as well as the school. The school attracted national media attention for its innovative features. A Nashville newspaper dubbed the new buildings “Classes in Glass” because of the unusually large amount of glass used in their design. Two circular buildings, designated "E" and "F", were added in 1963. With the move to the new campus, the school's street address was 127 Providence Road for many years until the school's reconstruction in 2005 moved the administrative offices to the Oak Ridge Turnpike side of the school. The school's street address is now 1450 Oak Ridge Turnpike.
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