Children's Museum of Oak Ridge
The Children's Museum of Oak Ridge (CMOR) is a nonprofit museum for kids in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It offers interactive exhibits, classrooms, and educational programs, along with toy and local history collections.
The museum began as a Girl Scout project and opened on March 11, 1973, with a $500 Reader’s Digest grant in the library of Jefferson Junior High School. In January 1974 it moved to Highland View Elementary School, where it now has about 54,000 square feet of space for exhibits, classrooms, and events. The museum bought the building and land from the city in 1983.
The Highland View Elementary School building was built in 1943–44 to serve the children of Manhattan Project workers. It has 25 classrooms and could house about 765 students. In 1993, the school site was listed as a contributing property in the Oak Ridge Historic District.
Selma Shapiro led the museum from its early days until 2004 and then volunteered until 2011. She received the Gordon Holl Arts Administrator Award in the early 1980s and was named to the American Association of Museums Centennial Honor Roll in 2005.
From 1978 to 1982 the museum ran An Appalachian Experience, a public education project funded by a $376,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The project produced teaching materials on Appalachia and helped publish An Encyclopedia of East Tennessee in 1982.
The museum is located at 461 West Outer Drive, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:39 (CET).