In 1942, residents of a sleepy rural town in eastern Tennessee arrived home to find eviction notices tacked on their front doors. Some were told to get out in as soon as just two weeks, with compensation but no reason given (much later, we all found out why).
Over the years, the government turned that rural area into a secret but bustling city of 70,000 people. So secret was the city that it was ringed with fences with armed guards and didn't even show up on any maps. Even its name, Oak Ridge, was carefully chosen to be bland, rural-sounding name to hold "outside curiosity to a minimum."
But what is life inside a secret city looks like? A Continuous Lean blog has a gallery of digitized photos recently released by the Department of Energy: Link | More at Flickr