A town cleared for the hydrogen bomb, rebuilt fourteen miles north
NOTHING STANDS HERE. Ellenton began around 1870 as a depot on the Port Royal Railroad, named, the story goes, by the line’s president for a local girl, Mary Ellen Dunbar, and by 1950 it had 746 people. That November the Atomic Energy Commission announced the Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons plant across Barnwell and Aiken counties, and some six thousand people were moved off the land, Ellenton the largest town among them. The last resident left on 1 April 1952. Many took their homes and businesses fourteen miles north and incorporated New Ellenton on 26 April; locals called it the first victim of the H-bomb. The old town site lies inside the plant, closed to the public.
Savannah River Site, Aiken and Barnwell counties, South Carolina
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
