Editing Roane County, Tennessee (section)

==History==

Roane County was formed in 1801, and named for [[Archibald Roane]], the second Governor of Tennessee.<ref name=tehc />  Upon the creation of the [[Southwest Territory]] in 1790, the territory's governor, [[William Blount]], initially wanted to locate the territorial capital at the mouth of the [[Clinch River]], but was unable to obtain title to the land from the [[Cherokee]]. Kingston, Roane's county seat, is rooted in [[Fort Southwest Point]], a frontier fort constructed in the early 1790s.<ref name=tehc />

During the Civil War, Roane County, like many East Tennessee counties, was largely pro-Union. When Tennessee voted on the Ordinance of Secession on June 8, 1861, Roane Countians voted 1,568 to 454 in favor of remaining in the Union.<ref>Oliver Perry Temple, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=g8xYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA199 East Tennessee and the Civil War]'' (R. Clarke Company, 1899), p. 199.</ref>  In October 1861, Union guerrilla William B. Carter organized the [[East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy]] from a command post in Kingston.<ref>David Madden, "Unionist Resistance to Confederate Occupation: The Bridge Burners of East Tennessee," East Tennessee Historical Society Publications, Vols. 52-53 (1980–1981), pp. 22-40.</ref>  During the [[Knoxville Campaign]] in December 1863, a Union force led by General [[James G. Spears]] scattered a small Confederate force led by John R. Hart near Kingston.<ref>Earl J. Hess, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=3raeHWhCVZcC&pg=PA198 The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee]'' (University of Tennessee Press, 2012), p. 198.</ref>

In the years following the Civil War, Rockwood grew into a major iron and coal mining center with the establishment of the Roane Iron Company by General [[John T. Wilder]]. Iron ore and coal were mined on Walden Ridge and shipped to Rockwood, where the ore was converted into pig iron. The pig iron was then shipped to rolling mills in Knoxville or Chattanooga.<ref name=tehc />

[[File:ETTP 2006 (8003095461).jpg|thumb|K-25, site of uranium enrichment for the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima]]

During the late 19th century, northern investors established two planned cities in Roane County&mdash; [[Cardiff, Tennessee|Cardiff]] and [[Harriman, Tennessee|Harriman]]. Cardiff, located northeast of Rockwood, was planned as a company town to support several proposed mining industries in the area. Harriman was planned as a [[Temperance Towns|Temperance Town]]. Both ventures suffered critical setbacks as a result of the [[Panic of 1893]]. Harriman survived, but never grew in the manner its planners had envisioned, while Cardiff failed altogether.<ref>John Benhart, ''Appalachian Aspirations: The Geography of Urbanization and Development in the Upper Tennessee River Valley, 1865-1900'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 5-10.</ref>  During World War II, the federal government created the city of [[Oak Ridge, Tennessee|Oak Ridge]] as a planned community as part of the [[Manhattan Project]] to develop the atomic bomb. As a result of the Project, both the [[K-25|K-25 gaseous diffusion plant]] and the [[Oak Ridge National Laboratory]] are located in the county.