Colonel Marshall and General Groves met to discuss the site of the X-10 Graphite Reactor, as Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project:
The site Marshall had selected was near the town of Clinton, about seventeen miles from Knoxville. The highways from Knoxville would be satisfactory in every way for our early operations. Railroad service was adequate, and an adequate source of water existed in the small river which flowed through the area.
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Originally, the entire site went under the name of “The Clinton Engineer Works,” the title deriving obviously from the near-by small town of Clinton. The name “Oak Ridge” did not come into general use until the summer of 1943, when it was chosen for the new community’s permanent housing area, built on a series of ridges overlooking part of the reservation. To avoid confusion, as well as to lessen outsiders’ curiosity, the post office address was Oak Ridge, but not until 1947 and after the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission was that name officially adopted, in lieu of the Clinton Engineer Works. As in the cases of Hanford and Los Alamos, our first consideration in the selection of names was to find the one least likely to draw attention to our work.
As soon as I had gone over the site, procurement of the land—about 54,000 acres—began. As always happens when the government takes over any sizable area, some owners suffered real hardships by their dislocation. This is inevitable, despite the fact that they are paid the full value of their property, as established by the government appraisers and accepted by the owners or, if not accepted, as fixed by federal judges and juries after condemnation proceedings.
Things got off to an inauspicious start when Marshall sent a lower-ranking officer to inform the Governor:
My experience in this case highlights what everyone who issues general instructions, or what in military terms are called mission orders, must always remember. While normally instructions will be followed much more intelligently if they are general rather than spelled out in great detail, inherently they are subject to misinterpretation, and when this happens, a great deal of effort must be expended in picking up the pieces. Nevertheless, mission orders must be used whenever there are many unknowns. Our project was full of unknowns, which was the principal reason why I habitually employed mission orders.
General Groves found that he was most effective in Washington, D.C., where he could “smooth the way” for his people on the field:
Another major advantage was that distance alone prevented me from becoming involved in too many details, which is so dampening to the initiative of subordinates.
His Washington HQ was modest:
As I consider Washington today, it seems incredible that these accommodations were as limited as they were. My secretary, Mrs. O’Leary, who was soon to become my chief administrative assistant, and I occupied one room. The only furniture added was one, and later another, heavy safe. Alterations were limited to those essential for security and consisted of sealing the ventilating louvers on an outside door, which was kept locked and bolted. One other door, leading to an adjoining conference room, was also locked permanently, so that the only access to the room which I occupied was through my outer office. This room, at first used by visitors, eventually accommodated three assistant secretaries and file clerks.
After several months we took over another small room. By a year later, we had grown to a total of seven rooms, of which two were occupied by district personnel working under the direction of the District Engineer on procurement matters. This arrangement lasted until shortly before the bombing operations, when we took over a few more rooms for our public information section, which had to be ready to start functioning with the news release on Hiroshima.
It was undoubtedly one of the smallest headquarters seen in modern Washington. Nevertheless, I fell far short of my goal of emulating General Sherman, who, in his march from Atlanta to the sea, had limited his headquarters baggage to less than what could be placed in a single escort wagon.
Our internal organization was simple and direct, and enabled me to make fast, positive decisions. I am, and always have been, strongly opposed to large staffs, for they are conducive to inaction and delay. Too often they bury the leaders’ capacity to make prompt and intelligent decisions under a mass of indecisive, long-winded staff studies.
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I soon realized that as long as we were under such pressure I would always find it necessary to assign to the field anyone whom I might consider acceptable as an executive officer in my headquarters. Consequently, I abandoned all further attempts and relied instead upon my chief secretary, who became my administrative assistant. With her exceptional talents, and her capacity for and willingness to work, Mrs. O’Leary more than fulfilled my highest expectations.