Displaced: New doc explores Ellenton

Aiken Standard file photo Cassels store in Ellenton, prior to the destruction of the town to make way for the Savannah River Site.

Around 6,000 Americans heard news in November 1950 that would force them to leave their home, uprooting all they had from an area some had lived in for six generations.

They had to move as progress, and national security, demanded their homes as they were designated as the site to make the most deadly weapon of the age. Anything standing on the hundreds of thousands of acres the government claimed would soon be razed to the ground.

These people were the residents of Ellenton, Dunbarton and other hamlets. They were forced to leave for "the bomb plant," as the Savannah River Site was known was in its embryonic phase.

Now, a new documentary is being released to celebrate and memorialize these folks and what they had to give up.

"Displaced: The Unexpected Fallout From The Cold War," is a new documentary produced by filmmaker Mark Albertin of Augusta's Scrapbook Video Productions. The film will debut during a free screening, which is open to the public and is to be held March 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Etherredge Center at USC Aiken.

Over a three-year period, Albertin has interviewed dozens of ejected Ellentonians in an effort to catalogue the stories of these aging individuals and what he describes as "their heroic act of patriotism" so it would not be lost to time.

Albertin discovered Ellenton and Dunbarton while researching another local documentary in 2005, and felt drawn to find the people who had gone through the eviction. Since then, he has spent his weekends and vacations interviewing and learning from the personal accounts.

The film is filled not just with interviews, but with a vast array of images of the pre-and post-demolition towns.

"They talk about these places like it was heaven on earth ... utopia," he said.

While memory may have enhanced people's feelings for the small, rural South Carolina town, what is not exaggerated is "the community bond." Something that Albertin believes is expressed in the film.

Today residents of the two major towns meet for annual reunions and remember their towns. These reunions were a jumping-off point for research, Albertin said.

"The film shows a good reflection, a balanced portrait of the South and rural America," he said.

Seemingly insulated from the Cold War, Ellenton's destruction was inadvertently fueled from within. Mostly an area of farmers and sharecroppers, the small town was in the midst of a campaign to attract industry to their agricultural area. What they attracted was government interest in the area.

After the move, the evicted individuals have, mostly, been left very sceptical of the government that forced their move, Albertin said. Though the vast majority have accepted their fate, moved on and done well with their lives, their remains an element who believe in reclaiming Ellenton even though it is now an overgrown, flattened slab.

The project has been sponsored by the SRS Heritage Foundation through grants from Fluor Daniel and a grant from Aiken County.

For more information and snippets of interviews from the film go to www.displaced.us.