Oak Ridge was established in 1942 as a production site for the Manhattan Project—the massive American, British, and Canadian operation that developed the atomic bomb. Scientific development still plays a crucial role in the city’s economy and culture in general.

LDS Population

LDS Members make up 1.46% of the population of Oak Ridge. In the state of Tennessee there are 43,179 members, 10 stakes, 68 wards and 24 branches, 2 missions, and 2 temples.

LDS History

David W. Patten and Warren Parish arrived in Tennessee shortly before 11 October 1834 and soon baptized 31 people: organizing a branch by the end of the year. On March 27, 1835, Wilford Woodruff, then a priest, came to assist Parrish. When Warren Parrish was called as a Seventy in July 1835, he ordained Woodruff as an elder and placed him in charge of the work in Tennessee. The worst massacre of Church members in the South, however, occurred on August 10, 1884 when a mob shot to death missionaries William S. Berry and John H. Gibbs and local members W. Martin Conder and John Riley Hutson during LDS Church services.