Not until
that night did I realize how much of a part of the background of my world
trains had been nearly all my life.
Sure, the old W&A was close, but the old East Tennessee and
Georgia’s Chattanooga Extension was not much further.
Of course,
it didn’t hurt that most bands in the Philippines played “Chattanooga
Choo-Choo” (all of them played “Tennessee Waltz”, mind you, and some even knew
“Rocky Top”). Or that I’d worn out my
Arlo Guthrie cassette tape playing “City of New Orleans”. Or that “Midnight Train to Georgia” was on
the juke box of my favorite nightclub in Angeles City. Nor did it hurt that the movie Fried Green Tomatoes was released just a
couple of weeks after we landed at the Lovell Field airport across the tracks
from the former Chickamauga Station.
I have been
interested in railway stops, especially smaller ones, and the communities that
grew up around them, since watching the movie Fried Green Tomatoes in 1992.
I hadn’t really thought about doing anything with that until John
Wilson’s excellent “Chattanooga Railroad Series” began appearing on The Chattanoogan, but the real push came
after Cora Lanier, president of the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association,
asked me to give a talk at the East Chattanooga Reunion this past August. Since much of the history of East Chattanooga
is bound up with three different railroads, I was not only immersed, but
hooked.
Before I
started research for this, I had known vaguely that the railroads played a part
in both the establishment and dissolution of communities, but not really how
big.
For
example, before the railroad was planned, nothing existed at what is now
Atlanta, no city, town, or hamlet, nothing more than widely-separated farms
which did not even have a community designation. The community of Thrasherville grew up around
Zero Mile Post beginning in 1839, which soon became known as Terminus (sounds
like an episode of The Walking Dead). Zero Mile Post was moved four blocks in 1842,
and the growing community renamed itself Marthasville. The community finally incorporated as the
town of Atlanta in 1847.
Atlanta was
not the only town owing its existence almost solely to the railroads; there
were many such towns, and others owed their demise to the railroads, or rather
the lack thereof.
While the
railroads were responsible for the creation of the town that later became the
capital of the State of Georgia and one of the biggest in the South, they were
also responsible for the disappearance of some towns, even county seats.
To cite a
few regional cases:
(1)
Harrison, bereft of railroads entirely, found itself no longer the seat of
Hamilton County when that was moved to Chattanooga in 1870 and so instigated
the creation of James County, only to lose out to the railroad town of
Ooltewah, and ultimately returning to Hamilton County in 1883 and fading into
almost nonexistence;
(2)
Washington, seat of Rhea County, losing out to Smith’s Crossroads after the
Cincinnati Southern built their line through that community, and is now barely
a hamlet; and,
(3)
Bellefonte, the seat of Jackson County, Alabama, refused the offer to build the
town a depot by the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, resulting in the
establishment of Scottsboro, the loss to it of the county court in 1868, the
loss of its post office in 1895, and all of its citizens by the 1920s, leaving
it a ghost town.
Scottsboro
and Atlanta were far from the only towns whose sole reason for coming into
existence were the railroads, and many others changed their names when the
railroads came.
In the
beginning, I intended to limit the scope to railway stations in Hamilton
County, but being that I’m a big fan of context, it wasn’t long before the
territory I covered grew to include all of the surrounding counties, at least
out to the stations that were most significant for various reasons (coupon
station, county seat, terminus of a section, etc.). Along the way I learned something about
different types of railroad stations, though I’m sure my knowledge is incomplete.
A station
is the railroad stop, but not necessarily the facility there. Depending on traffic, that maybe a shed, a
platform, or a full depot. Sometimes
there are separate stations for passengers and freight; most of those here
included service for both.
A coupon
station is one where passengers can buy tickets at a counter. Otherwise, they must purchase them from the
conductor en route. Coupon stations on
these lines were rare, and sometimes the reasons certains stops were coupon
stations is not obvious.
A schedule
stop is one on the regular schedule of the railway, nearly all of which are
listed in the various editions of the Official
Railway Guide.
A request
stop is one not on the schedule at which trains only stop by request. These are also called a signal stop. Two more terms refer to the different types
of signals for the train before the days of radio communication. A whistle-stop refers to a signal from one of
the passengers or conductor pulling a cord to a whistle in the engine
room. A flag-stop refers to a flag put
up by a station to signal the train.
For freight
traffic, an agency station has on site a railroad agent to accept payment from
customers wanting to load cargo. A
nonagency station means that fees for freight must be prepaid elsewhere.
In
direction, “up” and “down” refer to travel from any given point anywhere on a
given line. By contrast, “above” and
“below” refer to directions from a single stationary point, almost always a
terminus, in this case Chattanooga.
Now we can
turn to the various railroads which came into Chattanooga and the various
stations along the way in the tri-state (TN-GA-AL) area. Stations on or at the terminus of a spur line
are marked with an asterisk.
WESTERN & ATLANTIC
RAILROAD, 1850
This is the
railroad that gave birth to Atlanta and other towns and spearheaded the making
of Chattanooga into the great railroad center it became.
The Western
& Atlantic Railroad (W&A) started life as the Georgia State Railroad,
which was leased to the company bearing this name in 1870. The railroad was built from Zero Mile Post in
what is now Atlanta to Chetoogeta Mountain in Whitfield County, and from Chattanooga
to the west side of the mountain. The
Chattanooga to Tunnelsville branch was completed in 1849, with service
beginning the same year. Passengers past
Tunnelsville, however, had to carry themselves and their belongings across
Chetoogeta Mountain to hop another train on the other side. But then the Chetoogeta Tunnel was finished,
track laid, and and the two lines joined in 1850.
As part of
the U.S. Military Rail Roads during the Civil War, the line was known as the
Chattanooga and Atlanta Railroad.
When the
lease of the Western & Atlantic with the State of Georgia ran out in 1890,
the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway (NC&StL) leased the
rights to the railroad, and there was then a complete line from Atlanta to
Nashville. The W&A continued
running separate passenger service alongside that of the NC&StL into the 1910s.
In 1957, the NC&StL
merged with its parent company, the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad.
In 1982, the L&N was itself was
merged into the successor of its own parent company, the Atlantic Coast Line
Railroad, as part of the Seaboard System Railroad, which merged with the
Chessie System railroads to become CSX Transportation in 1986.
The stations
on the Chattanooga-Tunnel Hill branch of the Western & Atlantic Railroad and
its successors were as follows.
Tunnel Hill
This schedule
stop was the southern terminus of the line before the tunnel opened.
The
community was called Doe Run until the building of the railroad; the town
incorporated as Tunnelsville in 1848. The
town and its station became Tunnel Hill in 1856. The depot, which still stands, is on the
eastern edge of the town a short distance beyond the mouth of the Western and
Atlantic Railroad Tunnel through Chetoogeta Mountain.
During the
Civil War, there were encounters here on 11 September 1863; 28 November 1863
(the last of the Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign); 23 February 1864; and,
finally, the Battle of Tunnel Hill on 7 May 1864, the first of the Atlanta
Campaign. During the Federal Military
Occupation, there was a blockhouse here.
The post
office of Tunnelsville was established in 1847, changing to Tunnel Hill in
1858.
Copeland Crossing
Three miles
down the line and the first after the W&A enters Catoosa County, this signal
stop was near the crossing of the railway by Bandy Road.
Greenwood
About eight-and-a-half
miles from Copeland, this signal stop was near the crossing of the railway by
Greenwood Road.
Catoosa Station
A mile and
a half down the line, this signal stop lay a mile from the eastern mouth of
Taylor’s, or Ringgold, Gap at the end of the eponymous road off U.S. Highway
41.
Its claim
to fame is having been the muster point for the (Confederate) Army of Tennessee
after its retreat from Chickamauga Station on 26 November 1863, which by
coincidence happened to be the first national Thanksgiving Day.
The post
office of Catoosa operated here from 1850 until 1853.
Ringgold
Another
mile-an-a-half brought the fine stone depot at this schedule stop which still
stands at its original location just west of the railway at the eastern edge of
the downtown area.
During the
Civil War, the Battle of Ringgold Gap took place here on 27 November 1963. There were also engagements 11 September and
17 September 1863 during the run-up to the Battle of the Chickamauga. Ringgold was the last station passed by The General during Andrews’ Raid of 12
April 1862 before it ran out of fuel three miles north in Rabbit Valley. During the Federal Military Occupation, a
blockhouse guarded the depot.
In 2009, a
bronze statue of Maj. Gen. Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, designed by Ron Tunison,
was unveiled and dedicated in the Gap, funded by the Cleburne Society and the
Ringgold Telephone Company, to commemorate his victory here. This came about in large part from the
efforts of anthropologist-historian Raymond Evans, who recently passed away.
The post
office of Ringgold was established in 1847.
Gaines Quarry
A little
less than four miles from Ringgold, this signal stop was primarily to load out limestone
quarried on the Hale Property by Graysville Mining and Manufacturing, but
occasionally there were passengers.
Graysville
One-and-a-half
miles further, this town was laid out by John D. Gray in 1849 in the postal village
known as Opelika after the Cherokee settlement in the vicinity, itself named
after the town of the “Napochi” Indians burned by Coosa Indians and Spanish
soldiers under Tristan de Luna in 1560.
Once a thriving town with several industries, this station was for a
long time a schedule stop. The tiny depot,
scaled down from Graysville’s glory days, stood between Front Street and the
railway in front of the old post office in the middle of the block between
Vaughn and Grove Streets.
There was
an engagement here between the retreating Army of the Tennessee against its
Union pursuers on 26 November 1863, and another nearby at the Lafayette road
and Ringgold road crossroads that same night.
There was also a skirmish here involving units of Wheeler’s Cavalry on 16
August 1864. During the Federal Military
Occupation, a blockhouse guarded the station and another the far end of the
railway bridge over the Chickamauga River.
The post
office was established here in 1850 as
Opalika, changing to Graysville in 1856.
Johnson
A mile down
the tracks, the first station in Hamilton Co., Tennessee, was a signal stop in
the southeast corner of the Concord community (now East Brainerd). It lay at the end of the farm road off
Davidson Road, which was supposed to have been part of the roadbed for the
Harrison, Lafayette, & Jacksonville Railroad whose construction was
ended by the war.
On 26
November 1863, the Battle of Cat Creek, as Sam Watkins called it, or of
Shepherd’s Run, as two Union accounts refer to it, took place nearby. It was the biggest engagement fought that day
between retreating Confederates and pursuing Union forces. The action only lasted an hour because it was
so near sundown.
Johnson Station appeared on railroad maps as late as 1892.
Concord
Woodstation
Not a
scheduled stop, this was a station to provide wood for steam locomotives in the
days before coal-burning. It stood at the foot of North Sanctuary Road at
the modern Audobon Acres facility, serviced in antebellum days by a slave who
lived in “Spring Frog’s Cabin”.
Whorley Switch
This signal
stop stood three-and-a-half miles down at Ellis’ Crossing of the Chattanooga-Graysville
Pike (or Bird’s Mill Road) of the railway, west of the tracks and north of East
Brainerd Road. Its main purpose was to
service the switch, or side-track, here.
The
building which formerly housed the Masonic Lodge to which my grandfather belonged,
Whorley Lodge, may be the sole reminder of Whorley, now known as Brainerd
Hills and Brainered Heights. The lodge was organized at the
nearby Concord Baptist Church, one of the oldest continuing Baptist
congregations in the county.
The post
office of Whorley operated from 1898 until 1907.
Chickamauga Station
A
mile-and-a-quarter down, this is the railway station talked about in Civil War
reports from or of “Chickamauga Station”.
The depot at this schedule stop sat on the east side of the tracks just
south of Chickamauga Road, now across the street from Lovell Field. The locals called the section in which the
station was built Pull Tight. Union maps from the Civil War sometimes refer
to it as Campbell’s Station, which was originally the name of the station, but
the name of the post office here was eventually adopted by the railroad.
When
Cleburne’s Division was stationed in the area during the summer of 1863 between
the Tullahoma Campaign and the Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign, two of the
redoubts he built guarded Chickamauga and its depot from Milliken Ridge. Later that year, Chickamauga Station was the
muster point of the Army of Tennessee after Missionary Ridge on 25 November
1863. The first engagements between
Union and Confederate forces on 26 November began north of here and continued
across Milliken Ridge into Hickory Valley.
Another engagement took place here on 30 January 1864. During the Federal Military Occupation, a
blockhouse guarded the depot and village.
The post
office of Chickamauga was established here in 1850, but service went by the
wayside during the war. By the time
service reopened in 1867, another community had a post office under the name
Chickamauga (see Daisy, in the section on the Cincinnati Southern), so it
adopted the name Chickamauga Station.
The name reverted to Chickamauga in 1882 when the other became Melville
in 1878. The name of the post office changed
to Shepherd in 1898 over confusion with Chickamauga, Georgia, which was given
priority due to its proximity to the National Park, but the depot’s name
remained the same well into the 20th century, when it was also changed to
Shepherd. The L&N closed Shepherd
depot and the USPS its post office in 1955.
The new USPS site in Brainerd Hills adopted the name Chickamauga
Station; in the 1980s it moved down East Brainerd Road to a spot near the old
Rains place under that name.
Col. Lewis
Shepherd, father of the well-known judge, operated a post office called Hickory
Valley at his nearby home from 1840 until 1842.
Holmes Station
This signal stop used to stand where Stein Paving and
Sealing now sits on Quintus Loop. Its primary raison d’etre was to
service the needs of Holmes Quarry of Chickamauga Quarry and Construction Company.
The site was significant enough in its day
to be the voting place for the county’s 15th Civil District. It is now part of Vulcan Materials.
During the
Civil War, the bridge immediately after this stop and one of the two beyond on
the W&A line were two of the three bridges burned 9 November 1861 in the
“Little Rebellion” by Unionist sympathizers.
Hamilton County had twice voted a majority against secession. While the two bridges were being repaired
(there were three in all on its tracks between Chickamauga Station and
Chattanooga), the W&A detoured to go over the bridge of the East Tennessee
& Georgia Railroad (ET&G).
Chickamauga Junction
After the Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign, Union
engineers from the U.S. Military Rail Roads built a junction of the Chattanoga
& Atlanta Railroad, USMRR (W&A) and the Chattanooga & Knoxville
Railroad, USMRR (ET&G) just west of Chickamauga River. This cut ten miles out of the C&A’s
mileage, which was the intention. The
junction was so important it was guarded by two blockhouses in the immediate
vicinity and another one-third mile down track.
On an 1866 U.S. Army map of the U.S. Military Rail Roads, the
Chickamauga Junction is given the
placename Rover.
After the war, the two railways returned to their
original routes, with the C&K building an overpass bridge above the C&A. The junction remained a station into the 20th
century. The point where the East
Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (later Southern Railway) passed
over the Western & Atlantic Railroad gave the name Rockeye to the immediate vicinity, one which passed out of use when
the name McCarty superceded it.
Before that, however, in the wake of the great flood
of 1886, the ETV&G and the W&A were junctioned once again, only this
time it was for the trains of the ETV&G to follow the tracks of the W&A
into town so as to avoid the Whiteside Tunnel, until repairs were completel and
it was deemed safe.
McCarty
This station stood where Allied Shipping now operates was used by both this railroad and later the NC&StL, but mainly by SOU.
For further information, see the section on the Chattanooga Extension Railroad.
Old
Boyce
The
original Boyce Station stood five miles below the later site at the Harrison
Pike crossing just east of Sivley Ford through South Chickamauga Creek.
Both the depot and the village around it were destroyed during the war,
and the community dispersed. When rebuilt after the war, Boyce Station
was several miles distant.
Kings
Bridge
In the late
19th century, the W&A established a signal station at about the same point
where the original Boyce Station stood before the war. They named it
Kings Bridge after the eponymous bridge which now crossed the creek at Sivley
Ford.
Boyce/Amnicola
After being
released from the U.S. Military Rail Road in 1865, the W&A rebuilt Boyce
Station four-and-a-half miles above its previous location, west of the railway
opposite the end of Curtis Street. It remained a schedule stop and in its
later years was a coupon station. When the Cincinnati Southern Railway
(CS) came to town in 1880, the depot moved a half mile above to a spot
north of Wilder Street west of the W&A tracks. After the CS built its
own line from Boyce to Chattanooga, the depot sat between the two railroads.
In 1880,
W&A changed the name of its depot to Amnicola. The City of Cincinnati
leased the CS to the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway
(CNO&TP), which built its own depot and named it Boyce. The W&A
changed its depot back to Boyce in late 1884, and when the Union Railway of
Chattanooga extended its tracks from Sherman Heights to Boyce Station in 1889,
it crossed those of both the W&A and the CNO&TP. In 1892, the
CNO&TP dismantled, moved, and reassembled its depot in Whitely, Kentucky,
returning to its past practice of sharing the depot of its neighbor, which
after 1890 was the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway (NC&StL).
After the
Boyce depot burned in 1912, Southern Railway (SOU)—which then controlled the
Alabama Great Southern Railway (AGS), which in turn controlled the CNO&TP
and the Belt Line—rebuilt it, the new facility opening in 1913. The
Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis ceased passenger service here in the
early 1930s and Southern in 1938, after which it was torn down.
The post
office of Boyce Junction was established in 1879. It changed to Amnicola a month later, to
Boyce for three weeks, back to Amnicola for eight years, then back to Boyce for
a year-and-a-half before settling on East Chattanooga in 1889. Postal service moved to Chattanooga in 1905. The town of Boyce, between Bachman and Sims
Streets and between the railroads and Chamberlain Avenue, merged with Sherman
Heights as the town of East Chattanooga in 1905.
King Street Junction
The
junction of this railroad with the ET&G.
For more
information, see the section on the Chattanooga Extension Railroad, ET&G.
Union Junction
This was originally
the junction of the W&A (and later the merged railways) with the tracks of
the Nashville & Chattanooga and its successors at the south end of the yards
of Union Depot.
Chattanooga
The northern terminus of the W&A, and the main
terminal in Chattanooga of its successors the NC&StL and the L&N, was
the Chattanooga Union Station, colloquially known as Union Depot, on what is
now Martin Luther King Boulevard until it closed in 1971. It was not only a schedule stop but a coupon
station.
The
passenger station and freight depot both stood across from the Read House. Both were torn down in 1972 along with the Car
Shed, despite efforts to save them. The
Car Shed was built first, a cooperative venture of the W&A with the
Nashville & Chattanooga (N&C) and the Memphis & Charleston (M&C) Railroads. The freight and passenger head stations were
built in 1882.
During the
Civil War, the town served as the headquarters for Confederate Department No. 2
and its successor the Department of the West, and later for the District of the
Etowah of the Union Department of the Cumberland. The Confederate Army of the Mississippi (forerunner
of the Army of Tennessee) occupied the region 23 July-28 August 1862. The Confederate Army of Tennessee occupied
the region 4 July-9 September 1863. The
Union Army of the Cumberland was besieged here 22 September-25 November 1863. Chattanooga also served as the main rear base
for Sherman’s Military Division of the Mississippi during the Atlanta Campaign.
The town
was the focus of the Chattanooga Campaign, which included two of the bloodiest
battles of the war, the Battle of the Chickamauga (or of Mud Flats) and the
(Third) Battle of Chattanooga, forming the most decisive series of encounters
in the western theater.
The First
Battle of Chattanooga occurred 7-8 June 1862.
The Second Battle of Chattanooga took place 21 August-8 September
1863. The Third Battle of Chattanooga,
also known as the Battles of Chattanooga, happened 23-25 November 1863.
The Federal
Military Occupation officially began 29 September 1863 during the siege, and
lasted until April 1866. After the
campaign, in addition to the system of walls, redoubts, and trenches (then
called “rifle pits”) which guarded the town, a huge two-story multi-sided blockhouse
stood south of Union Depot.
The post
office was established as Ross’ Landing in 1837. The name changed in 1838 when the new town
adopted the name Chattanooga.
Dalton Accommodation
From
as early as 1876 through 1898, the Western & Atlantic Railroad, and its successor
the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway, operated an accommodation rail
service daily between the cities of Chattanooga and Dalton, with stops in between.
EAST TENNESSEE & GEORGIA
RAILROAD, 1851
This
railroad began existence as the Hiwassee Railroad Company in Tennessee in 1836,
intending to link up with the Georgia State Railroad (Western & Atlantic, or
W&A) at Dalton extending to Knoxville, Tennessee. The Red Clay and Cross Plains Branch Railroad
Company was chartered in 1840 to meet the former company at Red Clay. After reorganizing into a single entity, the
two became the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad (ET&G). The first section opened between the southern
terminus at Dalton, Georgia, to which the community of Cross Plains had renamed
itself, and Loudon, Tennessee, in 1851.
The second section, from Loudon to Knoxville, opened in 1855.
During the
Civil War, the U.S. Military Rail Roads operated the railway from Cleveland
south under the name Cleveland and Dalton Railroad.
In 1869,
the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad merged with the East Tennessee & Virginia
Railroad (from Knoxville to Bristol) to form the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad. In 1883, it became
part of Baron d’Erlanger’s Queen & Crescent Route.
After J.P.
Morgan merged this railway with the Richmond and Danville Railroad in 1894 as
the Southern Railway (SOU), the stations formed part of SOU’s Chattanooga,
Cleveland, & Brunswick Division. Most
of these also formed the Cleveland & Dalton Division, in which they were all
schedule stops.
The
stations from Calhoun to Dalton on the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad and
its successors were as follows.
Calhoun
The last station
in McMinn County coming from Knoxville was the site of the Hiwassee Garrison before
Removal in 1838. Before the the Civil
War, it was a schedule stop but afterwards downgraded to a signal stop.
During the
Civil War, Unionist sympathizers burned the railway bridge over the Hiwassee
River linking this town with Charleston on 8 November 1861. There was a military engagement here on 26
September 1863 and again on 26 November 1863.
During the Federal Military Occupation, a blockhouse guarded this side
of the railway bridge.
The post
office of Calhoun operated from 1820 until 1869.
Charleston
The depot at
this schedule stop stood beside the Hiwassee River south of the railway.
Before the
Removal, this was the last location of the Cherokee Agency in the East. Many prominent Cherokee lived here, including
Lewis Ross, brother of John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation East. The Removal-era Fort Cass stood here guarding
the various camps into which the Cherokee were interned; it was built on the
site of the former agency.
Interesting
fact: In the late 19th century, the Eastern Cherokee Agency was located in
Charleston, Swain County, North Carolina.
During the
Civil War, there was an engagement here 26 November 1863, in the aftermath of
the Battles of Chattanooga, and another on 16 December 1863. The Union army built a redoubt and two
blockhouses to guard the bridge from this side of the Hiwassee, which marked
the eastern boundary of the Union District of the Etowah based in Chattanooga.
The post
office of Charleston was established in 1840.
Tasso
Originally
called Herndon then McMillan Station, this signal stop was in Dry Valley halfway
between Charleston and Cleveland. The
depot is long gone, but a small community is still there.
The post
office of Tasso operated from 1903 until 1953.
Cleveland
Seat of
Bradley County, Tennessee, this town was a schedule stop and coupon station on
the first major railroad line in East Tennessee. Its latest passenger station, built by
Southern Railway in the early 20th century, still stands at 175 Edwards Street,
now serving the town’s bus service.
During the
Civil War, there was an engagement here 25 November 1863, in the aftermath of
the Battles of Chattanooga. Another took
place 17 August 1864 during Wheeler’s cavalry raid behind Union lines. A blockhouse guarded the depot during the
Federal Military Occupation, supported by two redoubts, Fort McPherson and Fort
Sedgwick.
The post
office of Cleveland was established in 1836.
Blue Springs
This schedule
stop stood east of the tracks in Blue Springs Valley four miles south of
Cleveland at a crossing of the railway by Blue Springs Road.
The post
office of Blue Springs Station operated from 1874 until 1906.
Marble Switch
This signal
stop stood three miles south, near another crossing by Blue Springs Road. Its main purpose was to service the switch,
or side-track, here.
The post
office of Marble Switch operated from 1891 until 1906.
Weatherly Switch
This signal
stop stood two miles south, at the crossing of Weatherly Switch Road. There was also a side track here.
Red Clay
Originally
called State Line Station, this schedule stop was just inside Whitfield County,
Georgia, in the community that adopted the name Red Clay after the Cherokee
council grounds just over the state line in Bradley County.
During the
Civil War, troops from Union cavalry raided the depot here 27 November 1863.
The post
office of Red Clay operated from 1840 until 1905.
Cohutta Junction
Two miles
from Red Clay, this schedule stop was first known as Parker’s Woodyard, renamed
Cohutta Junction after it became the junction point for the Ooltewah Cut-off with the
main line of the ETV&G. The layout
of the well-planned town is readily apparent.
The post
office of Cohutta was established in 1882.
Varnell
This schedule
stop four miles from Cohutta gave its name to the community originally known as
Red Hill. Today the community is best
known for its large spring and for Prater’s Mill.
The post
office was established as Red Hill in 1834.
The name changed to Varnell’s Station in 1856, and to Varnell in 1929.
Waring
This schedule
stop five miles from Varnell lay at the crossing of the railway by Waring Road
NW.
The post
office of Waring operated from 1890 until 1906.
Dalton
After five
more miles, we reach the southern terminus of the ET&G, and the junction of
that railway with the Western & Atlantic.
Known as Cross Plains before the railroad came, the community adopted
the name Dalton at that time. In
addition to being a schedule stop, it was also a coupon station.
During the
Civil War, the First Battle of Dalton was fought here 27 February 1864. The Battles of Dug Gap, Buzzard’s Roost, and
Rocky Face took place immediately to the northwest 8-12 May 1864 at the start
of the Atlanta Campaign, just after the Battle of Tunnel Hill. The Second Battle of Dalton occurred 14-15
August during Wheeler’s cavalry raid behind Union lines. The Third Battle of Dalton happened early in
the Nashville Campaign on 13 October 1864.
During the
Federal Military Occupation, Union troops built two redoubts here, Fort Miller
and Fort Hill, the latter of which gave its name to the hill it was on. A blockhouse guarded the depot and railyard, and
another at nearby Buzzard’s Roost guarded the line of the railway.
Dalton is
fortunate to have not one but two surviving railroad depots. The Western & Atlantic Depot was built in
1852 to provide both passenger and freight service. The Southern Railway Freight Depot was built
in 1911. The first now houses a
restaurant and the second the city’s convention and visitors’ bureau.
The post
office was established here as Cross Plains in 1837, changing to Dalton in
1847.
NASHVILLE & CHATTANOOGA RAILROAD, 1854
Nicknamed
“The Dixie Line” in its subsequent incarnation, the Nashville & Chattanooga
Railroad (N&C) completed its line into Chattanooga in 1854.
During the
Civil War, the U.S. Military Rail Roads operated the line of the N&C under
the name Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, though under complete control of
the Union army.
After
purchasing two more railways, the N&C reincorporated as the Nashville,
Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway (NC&StL) in 1873. In 1880, the Louisville & Nashville (L&N)
Railroad took control in a hostile takeover, but continued to operate it as a
separate entity. The NC&StL leased
the Western and Atlantic (W&A) line from the State of Georgia in 1890. It merged with its parent company in 1957,
and the latter ultimately became part of CSX Transportation in 1985.
The
stations on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad its successors from
Stevenson, Alabama, to Chattanooga were as follows.
Stevenson
The N&C
completed its line to this city, town then, in Jackson County, Alabama, in
1852. The surviving depot, the fourth,
at this schedule stop and coupon station was built in a joint-venture with the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad (M&C) in 1872 and includes an eight-room
hotel. The L&N, parent company of
the NC&StL, closed it in 1976. It is
now the Stevenson Railway Depot and Hotel in the center of downtown.
During the
Civil War, Stevenson was occupied in April 1862 without a fight by Union forces
who later abandoned it to Confederate reoccupation. The Army of Tennessee withdrew after the
Tullahoma Campaign, and Union forces reoccupied it, this time permanently. There were engagements here on 18 July 1862
and 7 September 1863. The Union built
Fort Harker in 1862 and enlarged it in 1864; it was restored and opened as a city
park in 1985. Another redoubt named Fort
Mitchell guarded town from the north, and seven blockhouses surrounded the
town.
The post
office of Stevenson was established in 1832.
Willow Tree
Not even
surviving as a place-name, this ante-bellum station, probably a signal stop,
stood three miles down the line from Stevenson and was probably destroyed
during the war.
Bolivar
This schedule
stop and the village that grew around it stood five miles down the line from
Stevenson and two from Willow Tree, at the former site in modern times of the
North Alabama Hospital in Jackson Co. on Alabama Highway 227.
The post
office of Bolivar operated from 1835 until 1904.
Bridgeport
This
schedule stop and coupon station was originally called Jonesville, after the town. Both names changed to the present in
1854. For a time, the town hosted two Bridgeport
depots, one serving the two initial railroads and their successors and the
other the Sequatchie Valley Branch Railroad (SVB). In 1917, the L&N, parent of the NC&StL
which controlled the SVB, built a joint depot consolidating passenger and
freight service areas and company offices for both companies. The freight area burned, but the passenger
section remains, has been restored, and is now a museum.
During the
Civil War, Union forces took the town after the Siege of Bridgeport 23-29 April
1862. There was another engagement 27
August that same year. Union forces
abandoned the town and the Confederates reoccupied it until the Army of
Tennessee withdrew to Chattanooga after the Tullahoma Campaign. The Union held it for the rest of the
war.
During the
Federal Military Occupation, three redoubts were built here, each with a
blockhouse inside. A stand-alone
blockhouse guarded the depot, and another the railway bridges over the river. There was another blockhouse on Long Island
and one more on the hill on the left bank overlooking the two railway
bridges.
Starting in
late spring 1864, Bridgeport’s riverport hosted the 11th District of the
Mississippi Squadron, patrolling from Bridgeport to Muscle Shoals. The unit consisted of five tin-clads built by
Union engineers in Chattanooga.
The post
office was established as Jonesville in 1852, changing to Bridgeport in 1854.
Long Island
Two miles
down from Bridgeport, still in Jackson County, stood this schedule stop,
originally called Carpenter. The
community here, which went by Long Island well before the war, is a
mile-and-a-half away from the namesake island itself and still goes by Long
Island.
The post
office of Long Island operated from 1852 until 1966.
Taylor’s Store
Situated at
the stateline was this signal stop halfway between Long Island station and
Moore’s Crossing, just inside Marion County, Tennessee. During the Civil War it served as a muster
and departure point for several units from both armies. It survived the war for at least a decade.
Graham
This signal
stop once stood in Moore’s Crossing in Marion County, Tennessee, at the
crossing by Shellmound Road which gave its name to the community. All that remains of the tiny community once
there is the McDaniel-Moore Cemetery at the site of the former McDaniel
Chapel. It was about halfway between
Carpenter depot and Shellmound depot.
Shellmound
Named for
the huge mound of shell midden dating from the Woodland Era (100 BCE-800 CE),
this depot at this schedule stop stood at the eastern side of the mouth of Cole
City Hollow, beyond where Macedonia Road meets the railway; the exact site is
now under water. It was originally named
Nickajack for the community here, which in turn took its name from the Cherokee
town dating back to 1782 during the Cherokee-American Wars of 1776-1795. When the railroad renamed its depot
Shellmound, the community became known by that name.
During the
Civil War, Nickajack Cave was the primary source of saltpeter for the
Confederacy until it fell behind Union lines.
The post
office of Nickajack was established here in 1854. In 1879, it changed to Shellmound, and closed
in 1955.
Cole City
The
Nickajack Railroad spurred off south from Shellmound to service the Gordon
Mines and others of the Dade Coal Company at Cole City in Dade County, Georgia. The mines here used convict slave labor,
leasing prisoners from the state.
The post
office of Cole City operated from 1874 until 1911.
Ladd’s Switch
This signal
stop was on the western side of the mouth of Running Water Valley where Ladds Switch
Road crosses the railway. Its main
purpose was to service the switch, or side-track, here.
The post
office of Ladds operated from 1925 to 1937.
*Guild
This
station stood at the end of a spur line from Ladd’s Switch about a
mile north of the community of Haletown. It served the village of Guild
inhabited by workers constructing the Hales Bar Dam and the construction of the
dam itself. When that was finished, the workers village merged with its
neighbor to the south, and the names are still used interchangeably.
The post
office of Guild has operated since 1905.
Vulcan
This signal
stop was at the junction of the main line with the spur that serviced the
Vulcan Mines at the foot of the spur.
Whiteside
This schedule
stop stood in the heart of the community of formerly known Running Water, named
for the former Cherokee established in 1782 during the Cherokee-American
Wars. The famous war leader Dragging
Canoe made his home and headquarters here, and is buried in one of its
hollows. The depot formerly stood near
the current post office.
There were
no engagements here during the Civil War, but the (Confederate) Army of
Tennessee burned the railroad trestle on their withdrawal in 1863. Engineers from the (Union) Army of the
Cumberland replaced it with a stupendous two-level structure guarded by four of
the ten blockhouses between Bridgeport and Chattanooga throughout the Federal
Military Occupation.
The post
office of Running Water as established in 1847, changing to Whiteside in 1865.
Aetna
This signal
stop was at the junction of the main line with the spur that serviced the Aetna
Mines at the foot of the spur.
Summit Switch
This signal
stop was just inside Tennessee and south of the railway. The community there straddled the stateline;
Summit Cemetery is just inside Dade County, Georgia.
Hooker
This schedule
stop was the only station of the N&C and its successors in Dade County,
Georgia. Originally, it was named Lookout
Station; the name changed after the war.
The post
office of Lookout Station operated here from 1856 until 1867. In 1881, the post office was reestablished as
Lookout, the name changing to Hooker in 1890.
It closed in 1896.
Cross Hollow Switch
This signal
stop east of the later Hooker served the side-track here.
Wauhatchie Junction
This schedule
stop in Lookout Valley in Hamilton County, Tennessee, stood at the junction of
the N&C and the M&C with the Wills Valley Railroad and of their
successors. No longer providing
passenger service, a large freight depot services the needs of the large
railyards here. Even before the Civil
War it already had quite a number of side-tracks, which in the mid-20th century
expanded into the Wauhatchie Yards.
The Battle
of Wauhatchie took place here 28-29 October 1863. During the Federal Military Occupation, a
blockhouse guarded the depot and railway junction.
The
(second) post office of Wauhatchie operated here from 1866 until 1918.
Lookout
From late
1860s through the early decades of the 20th century, this schedule stop stood
next to the railway just east of where Kelly’s Ferry Road-Cummings Highway meets
Old Wauhatchie Pike, two miles down from Wauhatchie Junction. This is in the area of Tiftonia proper;
old-time residents will tell you there are three separate areas of Lookout
Valley: Brown’s Ferry, Tiftonia, and Wauhatchie.
The Battle
of Brown’s Ferry took place a mile-and-a-half north of here on 27 October 1863,
and there had been a previous engagement 7 September 1863. During the Federal Military Occupation, a
redoubt probably called Fort Hooker anchored the line of works that protected
Brown’s Ferry and Brown’s Landing from a southern approach.
The post
office of Lookout Valley operated in the vicinity from 1834 until 1848. There is a satellite station under that same
name operating under the Chattanooga Post Office today.
Cravens
Named for
the Civil War famous site on Lookout Mountain above it, this schedule stop stood
three miles from Lookout station, at the junction of the old Broad Gauge
(Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railway) with the Nashville & Chattanooga
Railroad and at the south end of the Cravens Yards.
A few maps
from the Civil War era show a station in the same vicinity designated “West
Chattanooga”. That could have been its
antebellum name or a Union army designation.
Union Junction
The
junction of this railroad with the Western & Atlantic Railroad into Union
Depot.
Chattanooga
The N&C
and its successors used Union Depot it until it closed in 1971.
For further
Chattanooga information, see the section on the Western and Atlantic Railroad.
Jasper Accommodation
From
as early as 1873 through 1918, the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, and its
successor the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway, operated an accommodation
rail service daily between the cities of Chattanooga and Jasper (Marion County,
Tennessee), with stops in between.
MEMPHIS & CHARLESTON
RAILROAD, 1857
Chartered
in 1846, the Memphis & Charleston Railroad (M&C) junctioned with the line
of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad (N&C) at Stevenson, Alabama, in
1857, and through a lease with the latter reached Chattanooga the same
year. At the time, it was the sole
east-west railroad existing in the South.
It was also the first railroad to include sleeper cars, and was unique
in making more money from passenger service than by hauling freight.
During the
Civil War, the U.S. Military Rail Roads operated the line of the M&C that
came into Chattanooga as the Memphis & Charleston Railroad (Eastern Division),
which ran from Decatur, Alabama, to Chattanooga. The western portions were almost entirely destroyed,
or at lest rendered unusable.
In 1877,
the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad leased the M&C but
continued to operate it as a separate line.
In 1883, the M&C became part of Baron d’Erlanger’s Queen and
Crescent Route. In 1887, the railway
company went into receivership and was purchased by the East Tennessee, Virginia,
& Georgia Railway (ETV&G). With
ETV&G, the M&C became part of Southern Railway (SOU), its assets
becoming SOU’s Chattanooga & Memphis Division.
Scottsboro
Scottsboro
was both a schedule stop and a coupon station as well as a town literally
created for the railroad. After
Bellefonte, the seat of Jackson County, Alabama, refused the railroad’s offer
to have a depot in or near its town, one of its more progressively inclined
citizens, Robert Scott, moved a few miles away to build a depot called Scott’s
Station. The brick freight depot built
by the M&C at the corner of North Houston and East Maple Streets now serves
as the Scottsboro Depot Museum. It is
one of three antebellum railroad depots left in Alabama. The courthouse was moved here from Bellefonte
in 1868.
During the
Civil War, Scottsboro was established as the headquarters for the 15th Corps of
the (Union) Army of the Tennessee. The
only engagement here took place late in the conflict on 8 January 1865, when
Confederate forces under Brig. Gen. Hylon Lyon attacked the Union garrison in
an attempt to seize the town but were driven off.
Scottsboro
became well-known during the Great Depression as the site of the trial of the
Scottsboro Boys. After they had been
convicted by an all-white jury of the rape of two white women (who had hopped
the same Memphis-bound train) and some sentenced to electrocution, Amy Licht,
chairperson of the Unemployed Council in Chattanooga, learned of their plight
while in jail awaiting trial for sedition (of which she and her fellow
defendants were exonerated). The
Unemployed Councils across the country were set up by the Trade Union Unity
League, the labor arm of the Communist Party USA. Licht contacted the party’s legal arm, the
International Labor Defense, and it was the lawyers of that organization who
provided the bulk of the legal work which ultimately led to their freedom.
The post
office of Scott’s Mill was established here in 1854, changing to Scottsboro in
1859.
Hollywood
In 1857, the
M&C established this schedule stop under the name Bellefonte Depot two
miles northwest of the county seat by that name, which had voted against the
railroad. In the 1880s, the railroad
changed the name of its station to Hollywood.
The town of
Bellefonte’s fortunes rapidly declined after their refusal of the
railroad. Citizens such as Robert Scott
moved away. The courthouse burned in the
early years of the war, and in 1868 the county seat moved to Scottsboro. Its post office, established in 1822, closed
in 1895. It is now a noted ghost town. The town was named after the Removal era
internment camp here, Camp Bellefonte.
When the
M&C first built their depot, a post office briefly operated in 1857 under
the name Bellefonte Depot but did not survive until the end of the year,
probably due to its proximity to the town and post office of Bellefonte. Postal service was reestablished at this
station under the name Samples in 1883 when the residents incorporated as a
town by that name. The name of the post
office changed to Hollywood along with that of the town in 1887.
Fackler
This schedule
stop was at the unincorporated community of Jackson County, Alabama, by that
name and was the reason for this community’s beginning.
During the
Chattanooga Campaign of the Civil War, the 90th Illinois Volunteer Infantry was
based out of here.
The post
office of Fackler was established in 1869.
Stevenson
When the
M&C made the connection to the N&C here, it joined with the latter to
build a larger joint depot. That depot
was destroyed during the Civil War, and the Government House between the tracks
of the two railways was used instead.
After the war, it became the official Stevenson Depot until 1872, when
the two railways built another joint-effort depot, the one that now stands in
the heart of town.
For more
information, see the entry for Stevenson under section for the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad.
Chattanooga
In
Chattanooga, the M&C used Union Depot until coming under the control of the
ETV&G.
For more
Chattanooga information, see that entry under the Western & Atlantic
Railroad.
CHATTANOOGA EXTENSION
RAILROAD, 1859
The first
effort to build a line connecting Chattanooga to the East Tennessee & Georgia
Railroad (ET&G) was launched by the Chattanooga, Harrison, & Cleveland
Railroad Company in 1850. This
reorganized in 1852 as the Chattanooga, Harrison, Georgetown, & Charleston
Railroad Company and began work in 1854.
The company graded some roadbed and began excavating the tunnel through
Missionary Ridge, then went bankrupt.
Amalgamation of the company with the ET&G to allow the construction
to proceed was hindered temporarily by a lawsuit brought by the Chattanooga,
Blue Springs, & Cleveland Railroad Company, which had also been granted a
charter for a branch route between the two towns. In the end, the ET&G won out, redrew the
route, completed the tunnel, and finished the branch railroad. The company officially named the passageway
through the ridge Whiteside Tunnel after James Whiteside of Chattanooga, one of
the company’s directors and one of the town’s early leaders. The new section opened for traffic into
Chattanooga in 1859.
The
official industry name for this section, at least at the time, is the
Chattanooga Extension, though on maps of the period, especially Union maps
during the war, it appears as Chattanooga & Cleveland Railroad. For the first few decades of its existence,
it appeared in timetables of the Official
Railway Guide as the Chattanooga Branch Railroad, though integrated into
the main schedule of the ET&G.
As part of
the U.S. Military Rail Roads during the Civil War, this section formed part of
the Chattanooga and Knoxville Railroad.
In 1869,
the ET&G and the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad (Knoxville to
Bristol) consolidated to form the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad
(ETV&G). The ETV&G Railroad went
under in 1886, and was reorganized as the ETV&G Railway by its new
owners. This company merged with the
Richmond & Danville Railroad into Southern Railway (SOU) in 1894; these
stations here became part of SOU’s Bristol and Chattanooga Division. In 1982, SOU merged with Norfolk & Western Railway to
form Norfolk-Southern Railway, and has operated under that name ever since.
The
stations on the Chattanooga Extension of the ET&G and its successors were
as follows.
Cleveland
This scheduled
stop and coupon station was the junction of the Chattanooga Extension to what
was then ET&G’s main line.
For more
information, see the section on the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad.
Black Fox
This
initially schedule and later signal stop stood at the little community named
for the Cherokee leader who lived in the vicinity after the Cherokee-American Wars. The community has migrated about a mile
northeast of its original location near the station, which stood at the
crossing of the railroad by the old Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike.
The post
office of Black Fox operated from 1885 until 1915.
Tucker Springs
This tiny
community at this signal stop centers around the crossing of the railroad by
the old Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike, where its station once stood. It primarily serviced a resort centered
around the Tucker Springs Hotel.
The post
office of Tucker Springs operated from 1903 until 1925.
McDonald
Originally
called McDonald, then Hinches Station, and finally switched back to McDonald,
this schedule stop stood about five-and-a-half miles from Cleveland. Besides the railway stop, the main attraction
was the New Lauderback Springs Hotel. A
small community is still there.
The post
office of McDonald was established in 1860.
Hinches
At the very
western edge of Bradley County, the community of Mineral Park grew out of a
resort comprised of Mineral Springs Park at which the Mineral Springs Inn was
built in 1910. Being right on the railroad rather than merely near it
gave the resort a significant advantage. The signal stop was built
especially to service the resort and its guest.
The post
office of Mineral Park operated from 1914 until 1930.
Wells
The first station
in Hamilton County was this signal stop at the eastern mouth of Julian, or Dead
Man’s Gap opposite the end of Edgemon Road.
Its original antebellum name was Sulphur Springs Station, and it was
probably then a schedule stop.
Ooltewah
Seat of
James County, Tennessee from 1870 until 1919 when it was reintegrated into Hamilton
County. This depot stood north of the tracks halfway between Watkins Street and
Main Street, and the town, laid out
in neat squares, grew south of the railroad.
The third James County Courthouse still stands in the eastern part of
the town proper.
Until 1882,
this was the only station in Ooltewah and a schedule stop, which it remained
into the early 20th century after it neighbor began operating. In the 1910s, however, it downgraded to a
signal stop then closed. That closure,
however, did not leave the town without railroad service.
During the
Civil War, there was an engagement 24-25 November 1863; two during the winter
bivouac on 21 January 1864 and 18-19 February; and a fourth on 4 February 1865,
the last such recorded in Hamilton County.
The region to the north also hosted one of the bigger bushwacker groups (the
period term for Confederate guerrillas) in the vicinity active during the
occupation, Snow’s Scouts. During the
Federal Military Occupation, a blockhouse guarded the depot here.
The post
office was first established here in 1837, but was moved east as Julian Gap in
1843. It returned to Ooltewah in 1859,
and has operated there ever since.
Ooltewah Junction
Between
1882 and the 1910s, the town of Ooltewah was serviced by two railroad
depots. For more information, see the
section on the Tennessee State Line Railroad.
Summit
With its railway
platform probably located opposite the end of School Street off the old
Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike, this signal stop began as a wood station before the
steam locomotives started burning coal.
Silverdale
Some maps from the early 20th century show there being a stop here, almost certainly a signal stop.
Tyner
Originally
called Tynerville, this schedule stop lasted until 1970, and was servicing
passengers at least as late as 1960. The
depot was north of the tracks and east of the old stage road from Harrison now known
as Hickory Valley Road. The village grew
north towards the Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike (now Bonny Oaks Drive). After the Civil War, an Afro-American
settlement called Hawkinsville grew north of Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike along
the old stage road.
When the
U.S. Army established the TNT plant in 1940, the residents of both communities
were removed, and my great-grandfather lost his store at the intersection of
Hickory Valley Road and Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike. Residents of Tyner mostly relocated south of
the tracks within reach of the still-operating depot, while those of
Hawkinsville moved further south to New Hawkinsville along Pinewood Drive (my
great-grandparents moved to Ryall Springs).
During the
summer of 1863, Cleburne’s Division of the (Confederate) Army of Tennessee was
stationed in the area, and in Harrison. Of
the five redoubts they built in the vicinity, two guarded Tyner, one on the
hill where Tyner Middle Academy now stands, and the other in the village of
Tyner itself, where Cleburne had his headquarters.
In the
retreat of the Army of Tennessee from Chickamauga Station to Ringgold on 26
November 1863, a skirmish took place here between the 55th Ohio Volunteers of
Howard’s 11th Corps and the 4th Kentucky Infantry of Lewis’ Kentucky Orphan
Brigade. During the Federal Military
Occupation, a blockhouse guarded the depot here.
The second
of the Cleburne redoubts mentioned above, the one in the former village of
Tyner, is in good enough condition of preservation to be restored to the state
of Fort Harker in Stevenson, Alabama, which would be a great attraction for
tourists and Civil War buffs.
The post
office of Tynersville was established in 1860, changing later that year to just
Tyner, operating until 1972.
Jersey
The ETV&G established a station here, halfway
between Tyner and Chickamauga River, called Carr’s Switch in the early
1880s. The name changed after the planned
town of Jersey was founded by the owners of Altamede, Bonny Oaks, and Eastwood farms.
This schedule stop stood at the crossing
of the railroad by Jersey Pike, the sole remaining witness to this station’s
former existence.
Chickamauga Creek Branch
One map shows a stop halfway between Jersey and Chickamauga Creek with this name.
Grand Junction
Not a historical
depot, but the main station of the Tennessee Valley Railroad (TVR), the steam
railway operated by the TVR Museum. On
the Mission Ridge Local, the TVR carries passengers on tracks along the old
ETV&G right-of-way, donated by Southern Railway, through the Whiteside
Tunnel, stopping at its East Chattanooga Station before proceeding to Terminal
Station downtown. The TVR offers longer
trips such as the Chickamauga Turn and the Summerville Steam Specials. The TVR runs its Hiwassee River Rail Adventure
out of its Etowah Station, the original L&N depot which has been
restored. The address for Grand Junction
Station is 4119 Cromwell Road.
Chickamauga Junction
The bridge
of the ET&G and its successors over the tracks of the Western & Atlantic (W&A),
and during the Federal Military Occupation the site of a physical junction of
the two railways.
For further
information, see the section on the Western & Atlantic Railroad.
McCarty Station
Serving both the W&A (and later the NC&StL) and SOU but mainly the last of these, this signal stop stood where Allied Shipping now operates on Lightfoot Mill Road in a diamond formed by the tracks of the former and of the latter (now part of the Tennessee Valley Railway). Its primary purpose was to service Chickamauga Fertilizer Works, a division of A.D. Adair & McCarty Bros., Inc. based in Atlanta, Georgia; J.D. McCarty was the on-site superintendent.
A post office of McCarty Station operated here in the late 19th century.
East Chattanooga
Before and
during the Civil War, there was a depot at this schedule stop called Glass
Station until it burned in the Battle of Tunnel Hill, Tn. After the war, the ET&G built another depot
north of the tracks inside the loop that now connects Awtry Street to Arno
Street, called Tunnel from the surrounding community. The name briefly changed to Arno in the early
1880s. In 1888, the name again changed,
to Sherman Heights. This depot burned
down in 1913, and SOU rebuilt east of the tracks and south of Crutchfield
Street but named this one East Chattanooga, at almost the same site of the
Tennessee Valley Railroad’s own station of this name. Sherman Heights was also a stop on the Union
Railway of Chattanooga, but not at this depot.
The name
Sherman Heights derived from the main action of the Battle of Missionary Ridge on
25 November between the 15th Corps of the Union Army of the Tennessee and
Cleburne’s Divison of the Confederate Army of Tennessee lasting from 9:30 am to
2:30 pm. The action devastated the
entire area, especially the Glass farm for which the district is now named. To balance the scales and honor the
Confederate victor of the engagement, residents christened the premier guest house
and meeting hall on Glass Street as the Cleburne Hotel.
Sherman’s
Reservation of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga Park occupies the entire top of
Tunnel/Trueblood Hill, and while rivaling Point Park as the crown of the park
in Chattanooga with its unparalleled view of the city, is also the most
neglected and least easily accessible, especially to the movement-impaired.
The post
office of Mission Ridge was established in what was then still called Tunnel in
1884, and renamed Sherman Heights in 1888 after the community adopted that name
the previous year. Like East Chattanooga
P.O. in Boyce, it was moved to Chattanooga in 1905. Sherman Heights merged with Boyce as the town
of East Chattanooga later that same year.
Burgess
This signal stop stood at the Dodson Avenue crossing of the railway, near the
intersection of the former with Ruby Street.
A post office of Burgess operated
here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Citico
Junction
The
junction of this railroad with the Belt Line, its name derived from the nearby
Citico Furnace next to the eponymous creek. From the network of side
tracks to support freight traffic from the facility was born the Citico Yards
of the ETV&G/SOU. The Afro-American community of Citico City, now
better known as Lincoln Park, also owes its existence to Citico Furnace.
SOU’s Citico Yard later combined with the Citico Yards of the CNO&TP and
ultimately became the modern DeButts Yards. For freight purposes,
Citico Junction remained a schedule stop until at least 1970.
King Street Junction
The second
junction of this railroad with the W&A on its way to Union Depot was just
east of what’s now King Street and south of what would be East 13th
Street. From here, the two railroads
used the same tracks to their terminus. King
Street did not exist at the time but I have not been able to discover the name
of the junction. At least before and
during the Civil War, a depot stood east of the V of this junction. The former site of both is now occupied by
Docu-Shred LLC at 1208 King Street.
Chattanooga
The ET&G
used the Union Depot from 1859 until it became part of the later the ETV&G
in 1869, after which the latter used it until 1888, when the Central Passenger Station opened at Market and West 13th Streets.
After it became part of SOU, that use continued until 1909 when Southern opened Chattanooga Terminal Station on South Market Street.
Terminal Station closed for passenger service in 1970, and in 1973
reopened as the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
For further
Chattanooga information, see the section on the Western & nd Atlantic Railroad.
HARRISON & JACKSONVILLE RAILROAD, 1859
This railway planned to run from Harrison, Tennessee, through Lafayette,
Georgia, terminating at Jacksonville, Alabama, was Harrison’s last grasp at
obtaining a railroad so as not to fall any farther behind its rival,
Chattanooga. Some of the roadbed was
graded (Harrison to Silverdale, Silverdale to Concord), and even ties laid
(Harrison to Silverdale). The plans
included a junction with the Western & Atlantic Railroad a mile up from
Graysville Station in Catoosa County, Georgia, but construction was interrupted
by the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion.
For further information,
see: Harrison, Selma, & Cincinnati Railroad, 1866
WILLS VALLEY RAILROAD,
1860
The Wills
Valley Railroad (WV) was chartered to link Elyton, Alabama (now part of
Birmingham) with Chattanooga, junctioning with the Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad at Wauhatchie. It opened the
line from Trenton to Wauhatchie in late 1860.
The Civil War naturally interrupted its growth. As part of the U.S. Military Rail Roads, it
was designated as Trenton Branch of the Nashville & Chattanooga
Railroad. In 1868, the WV merged with
its sister railway, the North East & South West Alabama Railroad, that was
supposed to link from Elyton to Meridian, Mississippi. The new venture was known as the Alabama &
Chattanooga Railroad (A&C) by 1871, and this company finished the intended
railway the same year.
In 1878,
the railway reorganized as the Alabama Great Southern Railway (AGS) under the
auspices of a holding company owned by Frederic Emile, Baron d’Erlanger. Baron d’Erlanger is better known to
Chattanoogans as the patron of Baroness Erlanger Hospital, so named on honor of
Emile’s American wife, Marguerite Mathilde Slidell, daughter of John Slidell, Confederate
Ambassador to the Court of Napoleon III.
In 1883, Baron d’Erlanger organized five railroads including AGS into
the Queen & Crescent Route connecting the “Queen City” (Cincinnatti) to the
“Crescent City” (New Orleans).
In 1890,
the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railway and the Richmond & Danville
Railroad gained a joint controlling interest in the AGS; these two became
Southern Railway (SOU) in 1894. Under
SOU, these stations became part of the Chattanooga and New Orleans Division. Though owned by parent companies since 1890, the
AGS continues to operate as a separate entity to this day.
The
stations on the Wills Valley Railroad and its successors from Fort Payne, Alabama, to Chattanooga were as follows.
Fort Payne
Seat of DeKalb County, Alabama, its depot on AGS still
stands at 105 5th Street and is now a historical museum.
Minvale
Probably
a signal stop, this station lay a mile-and-a-half up the tracks from the Fort
Payne Depot.
Allen
Six miles up the tracks in the vicinity of the current Allen
Memorial Baptist Church stood this schedule stop, originally called Holloman’s
Station.
Valleyhead
This schedule stop lay five or six miles up the tracks from
Allen.
High Point
This
signal stop lay halfway between Valleyhead and Kaolin.
James Station
This schedule stop but three miles up the tracks from
Valleyhead likely replaced the next stop up the line, at least on the schedule. It was the home to Kaolin Post Office.
Battele
Formerly
called Eureka Coal Mines, this schedule stop lay just two miles up the tracks
from James. Now a ghost town, at the
dawn of the 20th century, Battele hosted hundreds of houses, a school, a
commissary, a hotel, a post office, and an advanced water system.
Sulphur Springs
The schedule
stop and coupon station in Dade County just inside the Georgia state line
coming from Birmingham was originally called Smith. The name changed due to the popularity of the
resort that grew up at the mineral springs in the vicinity of the station.
The post
office of Smith operated here from 1862 until 1890, when the name changed to
Sulphur Springs, operating until 1955.
Cloverdale
Four miles
down the line stood the signal stop originally known as Nisbit’s.
The post
office of Cloverdale operated from 1869 until 1889.
Rising Fawn
Another two
miles down brought trains to this schedule stop, named for a Cherokee leader
living in the vicinity after the Cherokee-American Wars better known to
Americans as George Lowery. The
community was originally known as Staunton.
At one time incorporated, Rising Fawn thrived because of nearby mines
and manufacturing but is now reduced to a small fraction of its glory. It is not, however, a ghost town, and several
buildings survive from that era, including the 19th century Stewart House (where
my grandmother was born) and the Cureton House.
The depot stood next to the tracks across the main road through the
valley, at or near the site of the modern Depot Diner.
The Rising
Fawn Iron Works Railroad serviced the blast furnace built a mile east of here,
junctioning with AGS at this station.
The post
office of Rising Fawn was established in 1840.
Dademont
Three more
miles brought travellers to this signal stop, originally known as Cureton’s.
Tatum
Two miles
down the line, twenty from Chattanooga, stood this signal stop, named for the
family which first owned the coal mining operation that brought Rising Fawn’s
prosperity.
Trenton
The depot
at this schedule stop in the seat of Dade County formerly known as Salem (which
explains “New” Salem overlooking the city from atop Lookout Mountain), stands
two miles down from the former Tatum Station.
Until the line was completed to Birmingham, Trenton was the southern
terminus of the WV. The restored depot,
built by AGS in the 1920s, houses the city’s welcome center and chamber of
commerce at 111 Railroad Lane in the north section of the downtown area.
During the
Civil War, an engagement took place here on 31 August 1863. The town and the county as a whole were also
subject to guerrilla raids by both jayhawkers and bushwackers, especially from
Sand Mountain.
The post
office was established as Dade in 1839, changing to Trenton in 1841.
New England City
Originally
called Morrison’s, this signal stop three-and-a-half miles down from Trenton
sometimes appears on maps as Squirreltown (which was a Cherokee village here
before the Removal). The community was
renamed and incorporated in 1891 hoping to attract business and bigger
manufacturing, and upgraded briefly to a schedule stop. The plans for the town included three public
parks and several manufacturing sites, but other than Hotel Dade, none of these
were ever built. Though not much
survives from its heyday, if you drive through you will notice the planning of
the few surviving streets.
The post
office of New England operated here from 1889 until 1907.
Morganville
Six miles
from Trenton, two-and-a-half down from New England City, this schedule stop gave
its name to the community it served.
The post
office was established here as Hobbie in 1856, changing its name to Morganville
in 1866, operating until 1913.
Wildwood
This schedule
stop west of the tracks across from the end of Hooker Road (State Route 299) was
first named Lea’s Crossing, then Wildwood by 1870.
The first
post office of Wauhatchie (before the one in Hamilton County) was established
in the vicinity in 1840 and was closed in 1856.
The post office of Wildwood was established in 1874.
Wauhatchie
The
junction of the WV and its successors with the Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad and its successors.
For more
information, see the section on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad.
Lookout
AGS’s use of
this station ended in 1917 with the completion of the Wauhatchie Extension
Railway to connect the AGS with the main line of the SOU into its tunnel
through the side of Lookout Mountain.
For more
information, see the section on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad.
Cravens
This station
was likewise bypassed by the SOU tunnel.
For more
information, see the section on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad.
Chattanooga
The WV and A&C
used the Union Depot, as did their successor the AGS until Central Depot opened
in 1888, switching to Terminal Station when that opened in 1909.
For further
Chattanooga information, see the sections on the Western and Atlantic Railroad and
the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, Chattanooga Extension.
Birmingham Accommodation
From
1883 through at least 1922, the Alabama Great Southern Railway operated an accommodation
rail service daily between the cities of Chattanooga and Birmingham, with stops
in between.HARRISON, SELMA, & CINCINNATI
RAILROAD, 1866
As soon as the Federal Military Occupation was ended (though full civil
government did not return until 1869), the citizens of the Town of Harrison
began to scramble for a new railroad of their own, reviving the formerly
planned Harrison & Jacksonville Railroad under this name. Shares sold at least as late as 1867, and in
the meantime the former company’s rights-of-way were regraded. Plans fell through, but even if they had not,
the town still would have lost its place as county seat to Chattanooga in 1870.
Even as late as the early 1870s, after the Town of Harrison had led a
movement to secede from Hamilton County and establish James County and in doing
so lost again to the also, albeit much smaller, railroad Town of Ooltewah,
Harrison was still trying to get a railroad of its own, lobbying with the City
of Cincinnati to alter its planned route.
When Charles Gray, son of John D. Gray, sold the Georgia town of
Graysville and all of his property and businesses therein in 1887, this
included the rights-of-way over this railroad and its likewise failed
predecessor, which ultimately came into the hands of Hamilton County. There it lay until well into the 20th
century, locals having no idea where this stretch of straight, flat pathway through
what was then called the Flatwoods had come.
Eventually, the surviving section become Graysville-Silverdale
Road, with a new route between the latter place and the now dwindling former
town of Harrison. The section between Walnut
Grove (as the former Concord, now East Brainerd, and sometimes Whorley, was called
then) and Silverdale became quickly known as Gunbarrel Road, and the name stuck.
After the U.S. Army seized the land for its
TNT plant in 1940, the northern section disappeared, not even reappearing after
Enterprise Park opened.
CHATTANOOGA & CENTRAL KENTUCKY
RAILROAD, 1866
This
railroad, chartered after the war but never built, was a direct outgrowth of
the U.S. Military Rail Roads. Indeed, military surveyors charted much of
the route, at least from Chattanooga to DeArmond’s Gap along the base of
Walden’s Ridge. The ultimate goal was to meet with another line coming
south from Cincinnati, Ohio, at Point Burnside on the Cumberland River.
In 1867, the name changed to Chattanooga & Cincinnati Railroad, but the
enterprise never came to fruition. However, the groundwork laid the way
for the Cincinnati Southern Railway, built and owned wholly by the City of
Cincinnati.
NEW ORLEANS, MOBILE,
& CHATTANOOGA RAILROAD, 1871
Th New
Orleans, Mobile, & Chattanooga Railroad (NOM&C) was the first to serve
the City of New Orleans and the Central Gulf Coast. Chartered to build a railway linking the
three cities in their name, the initial intent was to build to a link from the
coast with the planned Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad at Elyton,
Alabama. Once the line was complete
between New Orleans and Mobile, service began along that section in 1871.
Not long
after the start, the company decided to go west instead of east, changing its
name to New Orleans, Mobile, & Texas Railroad (NOM&T). In the mid-1870s, the NOM&T made an
agreement with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) to expand its
own service into the Ohio Valley while giving L&N access to the Gulf
Coast. L&N bought out the NOM&T
in 1880, the same year it gained a controlling interest in the Nashville,
Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway (NC&StL).
CINCINNATI SOUTHERN
RAILWAY, 1880
The
Cincinnati Southern Railway is unique in being a wholly-owned asset of the city
of Cincinnati, Ohio, the only such long-distance railroad in the U.S.A. The complete line to Chattanooga opened in
1880, reaching its intended southern terminus.
The following year, the City of Cincinnati leased the line to the
Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway Company (CNO&TP), owned
by the Baron d’Erlanger, the same who owned the Alabama Great Southern Railway
(AGS).
In 1883, the CNO&TP was one
of the five railroads Baron d’Erlanger organized into the Queen and Crescent
Route. CNO&TP was acquired by
Southern Railway (SOU) in 1895, under which it ran as the Cincinnati and
Chattanooga Division, though it continued as a separate entity, as it does now
under Norfolk-Southern Railway (NS). The City of Cincinnati
owned the physical line from there to Chattanooga until 2023, when it sold it to
Norfolk-Southern for $1.6 billion.
Interest in
this route to connect the South with the North began during the Federal
Military Occupation of Chattanooga in the Civil War. As soon as the war
ended in 1865, the state began passing out charters to companies to build the
railway along the same route. The Chattanooga & Kentucky Railroad was chartered
in 1865 (changed to Chattanooga and Cincinnati Railroad in 1866); the
Cincinnati, Southwestern, & Chattanooga Railroad was also chartered in 1865;
and the Harrison, Selma, & Cincinnati Railroad was chartered in 1866. None of these efforts panned out, however, so
the City of Cincinnati built the railway itself.
In 1917,
CNO&TP bought the spur line constructed by Chattanooga Traction Company
(CTC) between the latter’s station at C&D Junction to its own Tenbridge
depot. The existence of this line proved
fortuitous for the railroad two years later in August 1919, when inspectors
ruled its bridge over the Tennessee River was unsafe and needed to be
replaced. Until January the following
year, CNO&TP trains coming into Chattanooga switched to the spur line to
the CTC’s tracks at C&D Junction, which it followed to its small temporary
depot near the end of the John Ross Bridge.
From there, passengers rode buses into town.
The train engine
that inspired the song “Chattanooga Choo Choo” worked Cincinnati Southern
Railway. It was an old wood-burner of
the 2-6-0 Mogul type, of which an example can be seen at the Choo Choo Hilton
downtown.
The
stations on the Cincinnati Southern Railway and its successors from Dayton,
Tennessee, to Chattanooga were as follows.
Dayton (also North Dayton)
In 1877,
the community of Smith’s Crossroads renamed itself Dayton after the eponymous
city in the State of Ohio in honor of the impending arrival of the Cincinnati
Southern Railway. The town was
incorporated in 1885 and the county moved its seat here from Washington near
the river in 1890. This schedule stop
was also a coupon station.
The main
depot, briefly named North Dayton in the early 20th century, was located west
of the tracks and north of 2nd Avenue, where City Quick Wash is now.
During the
Civil War, the later Dayton was the site of the Crossroads Treaty between
Unionist sympathizer Col. William Clift of Hamilton County’s 7th Tennessee
Militia and Confederate Col. George Gillespie of the 43rd Tennessee Volunteers. In 1862, the only all-female cavalry unit of
the war organized here as the Rhea County Spartans. Never an official unit, they performed
USO-type services until the Federal Military Occupation began, then they
provided spy services and did minor sabotage.
The post
office was established here as Smith’s Crossroads in 1822. The name changed to Dayton in 1878.
South Dayton
In the
early 20th century, rail traffic here necessitated two depots, the first
redubbed North Dayton and the auxiliary depot South Dayton, also a schedule
stop. The latter ceased operation, or at
least downgraded to a signal stop, before the 1920s, leaving the original.
Graysville
In this
town nearly on the county line, the Seventh Day Adventist Church founded its
first college in the South, Graysville Academy.
The town and post office were founded in 1875, in anticipation of the
railroad. The school became Southern
Industrial School to reflect its shift toward more vocational training in 1897,
the name changing again in 1901, under which it operated until closing its
doors to move south in 1916.
The area
was initially settled by members of the regional ethnic group the Melungeons,
whose descendants in the early 20th century contracted Chattanooga Judge Lewis
Shepherd to represent them in a civil rights case. As an ethnic group, the Melungeons originated
in the tri-state area of Upper East Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, and
southeastern Kentucky, mainly in the first.
The railway
depot at this schedule stop was west of the tracks north the Burnett Street-Dayton
Avenue crossing. Mammy Swearingham was
its first agent, a rarity in a field almost entirely dominated at the time by
men.
The post
office of Graysville, Tennessee, was established in 1878.
Coulterville
This schedule stop was west of the tracks directly opposite
the John J. Coulter House, which still stands on Coulterville Road at the northwest
corner of Swafford Road and Nelson Cemetery Road in the extreme northern
section of Hamilton County, a mile-and-a-half down from Graysville.
The post office of Coulterville operated out of John
Hickman’s store on the southwest corner of Coulterville and Swafford Roads.from
1879 until 1916, when it moved to Sale Creek.
Home Stores
This signal
stop lay just over a mile down from
Coulterville.
Sale Creek
A mile down
the line, the depot at this schedule
stop, originally named Rock Creek until the residents complained enough, stood
at the Legget Road crossing opposite the end of Railroad Street. The stream, then the community, acquired this
name from having been the site at which the goods seized from the eleven
Cherokee towns in the area destroyed in 1779 by the Shelby expedition were
divided and auctioned.
During the
Civil War, after Tennessee voted to secede and join the Confederacy in June
1861, Col. William Clift, who owned a large plantation in Soddy, raised
Hamilton County’s regiment, the 7th Tennessee Militia, for the Union. The Cumberland Presbyterian campground here
served as their base, though their main activity was limited to drilling and
training. After the East Tennessee
bridge burnings in early November, the 6th Alabama Volunteers were sent to
offer them the choice between fighting and disbandment. Clift and the militia chose the latter, most
going to Kentucky to enlist in the Union army, Clift and several others taking
to the mountains as jayhawkers (the period term for Unionist guerrillas) before
following the path of their comrades.
The post
office of Sale Creek was established in 1841.
Retro
Three miles
down, the depot for this schedule stop stood at Retro-Hughes Road crossing of
the railway. The community was and is
known as Bakewell.
The post
office was established in 1880 as Retro, after the station. It became Bakewell in 1914, and was moved to
Sale Creek in 1964.
Rathburn
The name of
the depot at this schedule stop and coupon station was Soddy Coal Mines until
confusion arose with the station in northern Rhea County named Roddy. Thus it became Rathburn. The community, of course, has been Soddy, or
some version thereof, since the 1780s. The
depot stood west of the tracks at the end of the aptly named Depot Street.
The name
Soddy derives from the name of the Cherokee settlement here prior to the
Removal and first established during the Cherokee-American Wars. The name is not Cherokee, but Muskogean. The Cherokee form is “Itsati”, the same from
which we get “Chota”, the famous town formerly on the Little Tennessee River. According to Charles Hicks, then Principal
Chief of the Cherokee Nation, who pronouced it “Sawtee”, this was the name of
the Muskogean (or Creek) town which occupied Dallas and Friar’s Island during
the Mississippian era.
William
Clift, the Unionist firebrand, operated the post office of Soddy from 1829
until 1845. The post office was
reestablished in 1850, and continues today under the name Soddy-Daisy, to which
it was changed when the two communities merged and incorporated in 1972.
*Soddy
Landing
The terminus of a spur beginning at Rathburn Station, this line provided access
to a landing on the river.
*Big
Soddy Coal Mines
This station stood at the end of a spur from Rathburn Station.
Daisy
This small
station was briefly a schedule stop the late 1890s, three miles from Soddy, established
primarily as a postal depot after Col. Thomas Parks, operator of the Daisy Coal
Mines, donated land and named it for his mines, in order to have the post
office closer to his business office. By
the early 20th century, it had downgraded to a signal stop, if it still
existed.
Originally,
the name of the community of Daisy was Poe’s Crossroads, and it was the first
seat of the county court until it was moved to Dallas. In 1850, the residents changed the name to
Chickamauga, which, yes, was also the name of the better known community in
southern Hamilton County. The name
changed to Melville in 1878, then to Daisy in 1883, and finally to Soddy-Daisy
when it incorporated with its neighbor to the north under that name.
The post
office of Poe’s Crossroads operated here from 1846 until 1847. For information about the current post office
and its history, see the station below.
Melville
Just one
mile down lay the depot of the schedule stop called Melville, always the main
depot of the community even during the existence of its junior discussed
above. The depot stood at west of the
tracks at the crossing of Depot Road, now known as Hixson Street-Hyatte
Road. Though the names of the post
office and community changed in 1883, this depot retained its original name
until sometime between 1921, when it still appears in the Official Railroad Guide under this name, and 1945, when it appears
in the publication as Daisy. Though passenger
service ran here, this station’s main function was as a freight depot for Daisy
Coal Mines.
Restoration
of civilian post service lagged somewhat in the county, and in 1866 the
same-named village in the south of the county on the Western and Atlantic
Railroad still did not have postal service, so this community seized the
opportunity to have a post office of its own under the name Chickamauga. That’s why when service at the other
Chickamauga was restored, it was under the name Chickamauga Station. Mel Adams donated land for a bigger post
office under the condition it be named for him, so the name changed to Melville
in 1878. Col. Parks, owner of the
community’s main source of employment (the mines) did the same in 1883 to have
the name changed to Daisy. The
post-office merged with its neighbor along with the community in 1972 as
Soddy-Daisy.
Montlake
This signal
stop a mile-and-a-half down just north of the Thrasher Pike crossing of the
tracks was built in the early years of the 20th century primarily to serve the
passenger needs of the resort at the community of this name atop Walden’s
Ridge.
*Montlake
Coal Mines
This
station was reached by a spur from Montlake Station on the main line.
The post
office of Montlake operated here from 1909 until 1923, when it moved to Soddy,
which makes one wonder, why not to Daisy?
Cave Springs
Two miles
south stood a remote schedule stop at the pumping station next to the railway
below Cave Springs on top of the eponymous ridge adjacent to the tracks. There was no access road, so probably little
passenger traffic; its main reason for existence was probably water
replenishment in the days of steam engines. For the local community, the
site served as a park and picnic ground. The Cave Springs are the second
largest in East Tennessee.
Falling Water Post Office, which operated 1874-1906, moved into Cave Springs Station, though retaining its name, in 1880. Service transferred to Hixson Post Office in 1906.
Hixson
The depot at
this schedule stop one mile from Cave Springs station at the crossing of Old
Hixson Pike was originally called Lookout, but was changed to avoid confusion
with the same-named station on the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis
Railway. The community, known at the
coming of the railroad as Lakeside, soon took on the name of the depot.
The post
office of Lakeside was established in 1880.
Its postmaster, Ephraim F. Hixson, got the name of the post office
changed to Hixson in 1892, as which it still operates. From 1833 to 1839, his father, Ephraim
Hixson, Jr., ran a post office in the vicinity called North Chickamauga.
Tenbridge
Two-and-a-half
miles further stood this signal stop originally named Red Bank. The name was changed to avoid confusion with
the community to the north. It stood just
above the wye formed by the junction with the Chattanooga Traction Railway
(CTC) spur line from C & D Junction on its Red Bank (the original Red Bank)
Line to this point. The latter was an an
electric railway which had intended to use the line mainly for hauling freight
to the CNO&TP for shipping, but changed their plans soon after it was
finished. CTC sold the spur line to
CNO&TP in 1917; the major (and possibly only) stop between the two stations
was at Lupton City.
See also
the Hixson Division in the section on the Chattanooga Traction Company.
King’s Point
The railway
established a signal stop here and built a depot at the end of North Wilder
Road that it operated until at least the beginning of the 20th century. In the middle 20th century, the railway
established another station near here called Hulsey.
The planned
community of King’s Point still exists in carefully laid out in squares, now
surrounded on three sides by railroads.
The post
office of King’s Point operated from 1883 until 1898.
An earlier
post office in the vicinity operated from 1843 until 1844, under the name
Toqua, which was the name of the Cherokee town
here first established in late 1776.
It was destroyed and rebuilt in 1779, abandoned in 1782, and
reestablished after the Cherokee-American Wars.
A post office was again established in this vicnity in 1878 called
Sivley, changing its name to Toqua in 1880 until moving to Harrison near the
end of 1884.
Amnicola/Boyce
When the
Cincinnati Southern Railway (CS) arrived in 1880, it shared Amnicola depot with
the W&A. After the CNO&TP leased
the CS in 1881, it build its own depot which it named Boyce, the name of
W&A’s Amnicola until 1880. This the
railroad operated until 1892, when it dismantled, moved, and reassembled it at
Whitely, Kentucky, after which it returned to sharing the neighboring depot of
the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway (NC&StL), which had
replaced the W&A.
For more
information, see the section on the Western and Atlantic Railroad.
Winters
Spur
Halfway
between Boyce and Citico, this signal stop serviced a spur to the Citico Brick
Factory.
Avondale
Near the
Holtzclaw-Citico crossroads at its junction with the latter railway, the
CNO&TP shared a depot here with the Belt Line in the far southwest corner
of the eponymous suburb.
Citico Junction
Station
The junction of this railroad with the Belt Line and
the ETV&G and later Southern Railway, from 1880 to mid-1888, it was known
as Cincinnati Junction. Until Southern, which then controlled
CNO&TP, rerouted its lines upon building Terminal Station in the first
decade of the 20th century, this was a major station for the railroad.
Citico
Separate
from the Citico Junction station of the ETV&G/SOU and the Belt Line, this
was CNO&TP’s depot at the head of its tracks for its own Citico Yards which
at the time were separate from the Citico Yards of the ETV&G/SOU.
Chattanooga
The
terminus of the Cincinnati Southern Railway was Union Depot until 1888, when it
began using Central Depot. When Terminal
Station opened n 1909, it switched service there.
For further
information, see the sections on the Western & Atlantic Railroad and the Chattanooga Extension Railroad, 1858.
Rockwood Accommodation
From
1880 through 1909, Cincinnati Southern Railway, and its successor Cincinnati, New
Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway, operated a daily accommodation rail service between the cities of
Chattanooga and Rockwood (Roane County, Tennessee). This was largely on behalf of Roane Iron
Company, which had plants in both cities at the time and continued after the one
in Chattanooga shut down because by then the Citico Furnace was actively running.
It ended when production at Citico ceased.
CHATTANOOGA WESTERN
RAILWAY, 1882
This
railway was an enterprise launched by C.E. James. Chartered in 1880,
survey work was completed and work begun by 1882. The plan was to build a
bridge over the Tennessee River at Chattanooga from Tannery Flats near the
Roane Iron Works west of Cameron Hill to Moccasin Point. The rail line
was intended to go from there to the foot of Walden’s Ridge, then along that to
the mouth of Suck Creek, to Kelly’s Ferry, past the mouth of Mullen’s Cove, to
Copenhagen (modern Richard City), bypassing Jasper by at least a mile, where it
would cross the stateline. How much of the railroad was actually built is
anyone’s guess, but it never came to fruition.
At around
the same time, the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad planned a
similar route over much of the same ground, but those plans likewise came to
naught. The same story with an identical plan by the Memphis & Charleston Railroad in the latter 1880s. The charter of the Chattanooga
Western Railway was revived in 1888 and in 1894 but again not much
progress was made.
TENNESSEE STATE LINE
RAILROAD, 1883
This line
is better known as the Ooltewah Cut-Off, even in legal documents at the
beginning of the 20th century.
According
to A Legal History of the Development of the
Railroad System of Southern Railway Company by Fairfax Harrison (1901),
after the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad (ETV&G) acquired
the Macon and Brunswick Railroad, interested parties decided the railway needed
a shorter route to connect with the Cincinnati Southern Railway that had
recently begun operations into Chattanooga.
These parties incorporated the Ooltewah & Red Clay Railroad Company in
Tennessee in December 1881; the same individuals incorporated the Tennessee & Cohutta Railroad Company in Georgia in January1882. In May 1882, they won approval to consolidate
as the Tennessee State Line Railroad Company.
This was the entity which built the Ooltewah Cut-off.
In the
legal proceedings which accompanied the receivership of the ETV&G Railroad
which resulted in its being reorganized as the ETV&G Railway, it was
discovered the ETV&G did not own the Ooltewah Cut-off. The Tennessee State Line Railroad Company had
merely leased it to them. The ownership
did not get sorted out until Southern Railway (SOU) incorporated the entire
holding of ETV&G in 1894. After that
merger, these stations became part of SOU’s Chattanooga, Cleveland, and
Brunswick and Chattanooga, Cleveland, and Meridian Divisions.
The
stations on the Tennessee State Line Railroad were as follows.
Ooltewah Junction
The
northern terminus of the Cut-off, this schedule stop was briefly called
Turner’s Station. It stood at the end of
Rail Road Avenue in the V of the railroad junction. Passenger service moved here, and freight
service to the original Ooltewah Depot at the east end of town. The latter closed sometime in the 1910s, and
the name of this station became simply Ooltewah. Passenger service continued here at least
through 1960; SOU closed the depot in 1976.
Thatcher’s Switch/Collegedale
The signal
stop here primarily served shipping needs to limestone and lime mined nearby,
loaded onto cars on a side-track. The
station stood at the eastern mouth of McDaniel Gap between the tracks and
Apison Pike across from the end of Sanborn Drive.
When the
Seventh Day Adventist Church decided to close its Southern Training School in
Graysville, Tennessee, in 1916, it chose the valley here for its new Southern
Junior College. That institution grew
into Southern Missionary College in 1944, which became Southern College of
Seventh Day Adventists in 1982 then Southern Adventist University in 1996.
Postal
service was established here in 1919 as Collegedale, as which the community
incorporated in 1968.
Wooten’s Switch
A
mile-and-a-half downtrack, this signal stop was a side-track used to service cars and perhaps even engines, and included a platform, a tool shed platform, a shed furnace, and a water tank.
Apison
This
schedule stop was originally called O’Brian, but was soon changed because of
another station by that name in Tennessee.
In the early years of settlement in the 19th century, the area was known
as Zion Hill.
The post
office of Zion Hill operated in the vicinity from 1848 until 1866. Postal service was reestablished as Apison in
1882.
Howardville
This schedule
stop stood at the Howardville Road crossing of the railway.
The post
office of Howardsville operated from 1887 until 1931.
Cohutta
The
southern terminus of this line, its junction with the Western and Atlantic
Railroad, was originally intended to be State Line Station at Red Clay,
Whitfield County, Georgia, but this station proved better suited.
For further
Cohutta information, see the section on the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad,
1851.
QUEEN & CRESCENT ROUTE, 1883
In 1883, Baron Emile d’Erlanger began organizing railroads
in which he owned a controlling interest into a cooperative route providing
continuous service from Cincinnati (Queen City) to New Orleans (Crescent
City). It lasted under Southern Railway
through 1949.
Participating
railroads included Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway, Alabama Great
Southern Railway, New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad, Alabama & Vicksburg
Railroad, and Vicksburg, Shreveport, & Pacific Railway.
Locally to Chattanooga, the main physical difference was
that whereas the CNO&TP formerly had a single line going into the city after
crossing the Tennessee River, it was now given a second track.
UNION RAILWAY OF
CHATTANOOGA, 1886
Better
known as the Belt Line, this railroad was built by C.E. James, the entrepeneur
for whom the James Building downtown is named. Passenger service began on its first line in 1886, leaving Fort (Chestnut) Street Depot and going south to South Tredegar Iron Works on the left bank of the Tennessee River just below Ross’ Towhead before heading to Oak Hills then National Cemetery then Highland Park and Ridgedale. This line continued operation for freight after passenger services shifted to Newby Street.
The steam dummy railway grew quickly until it
circled the entire city. Though intended
at first mainly to ferry cargo between the city’s different railroads, James
saw the potential for passenger service, which opened the same year as its
freight service. The passenger cars
resembled the later electric trolleys, as did the steam dummy engines designed
to resemble the former that the railway used before switching to Forney
locomotives.
In the beginning, the railway operated entirely from
the Fort Street Station, then as lines were added from the Chestnut Street
Station (which was the same as the original) and from the Baldwin Street
Station. Later, the King Street Station replaced
the one on Baldwin Street, then it, in turn, was replaced by the Newby Street Station on
the corner of what’s now East 10th Street. Then the railway closed the station at Chestnut
Street and the one at Newby Street remained. Finally, the railway built Georgia Avenue Station
downtown, right where the Solomon Federal Building is now, and though Newby Street
remained in operation and had the offices, Georgia Avenue was the main terminal.
The former Newby Street Station still stands.
At its
peak, the Union Railway operated four passenger routes (its freight routes, of
course, were much more extensive). The line to East Lake from via Radcliff opened in March 1987; the line to St. Elmo opened in April 1887; the line to East Lake via East End and Rossville (Tennessee) opened in July 1887; and the line to Sherman Heights and East Chattanooga (Boyce) opened in August 1889. The Orchard
Knob Division and the Ridgedale Division operated out of the Georgia Avenue
Depot, while the Radcliff Division and the Mountain Division operated out of
the Newby Street Depot.
The Belt Line connected to or junctioned with all the
major long-haul railways coming into Chattanooga. It connected with the East
Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia (ETV&G) and the Memphis & Charleston (M&C)
at Citico Junction. It crossed the
ETV&G at Sherman Heights, the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis (NC&StL)
and the Alabama Great Southern (AGS) at Cravens, the Chattanooga Southern (CS) and
the Western & Atlantic (W&A) at Union Junction, the Chattanooga Southern (CS)
at Thurmans, and the Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus (CR&C) at Lookout
Creek.
Besides passenger services, the Belt Line operated in numerous areas mostly for freight purposes, which are detailed in John Wilson’s excellent series. The freight lines were the River Division, the Newby Street
Division, the Georgia Division, the Alton Park Division, the Citico Division,
the East Lake Division, and the Boyce Division.
In
addition, two local railways spurred off from the Belt Line: the Lookout
Mountain Incline Railway (Incline No. 1, not the one we have today) and the
Mission Ridge Incline Railway.
In 1888,
the railway underwent a reorganization and came out as the Chattanooga Union
Railway. From April to September in 1891, it merged with the
Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railway as Chattanooga Terminal & Suburban
Railway, then reverted to its old name. In 1892, another reorganization
made it the Belt Railway of Chattanooga.
In 1895, it went out of business due to the growing popularity of
electric railroads for local traffic, and was bought by AGS, which leased the
entire line to Rapid Transit of Chattanooga, an electric railway, in 1900.
Much of the
old Belt Line is gone. One line still
operates, however, the East Chattanooga Belt Railway, still under AGS.
While the
Belt Line provided passenger service, some thirty-seven small passenger depots
around the city supported it, some of which operated only briefly. The only coupon station was at the home
depot, and all these stops were on the schedule. The ones which can be accurately or
approximately identified by location rather than just name are as follows.
Orchard Knob Division
Later known as the Sherman Heights Division.
Park Place
Erroneously
called Fort Wood Station in the Official
Railway Guide, all four divisions shared this stop on their way out and
in. The neighborhood of Park Place
originally included everything from Flynn Street southwest to the railroad
tracks, the area beyond East 11th Street known by the early 20th century as
Onion Bottom. The Park Place depot stood
in the southwest corner of the intersection of Fairview Avenue and East 12th
Street. Park Place was the most
prominent neighborhood in the Old East Side after Fort Wood at the time the
Union Railway operated.
National Cemetery
This
station stood at the western beginning of the curve in the southeastern corner
of the National Cemetery occupying part
of the space where Mid-South Mattress stands at 1265 East 13th Street. At that time, the cemetery took up only the
central portion of its present extent, the surrounding land serving as Jackson
Park. There was no gate because there
was no surrounding fence. The depot was
actually at the northeastern tip of the suburb of Orange Grove.
Cedar
Grove
Listed as a
community of 109 residents in the Chattanooga City Directory of 1900, this
community had a depot on the Belt Line between National Cemetery and
Bald/Orchard Knob and is listed on the schedule for the Orchard Knob Division.
It was, perhaps, the name for the community between Olympia/Warner Park and the
National Cemetery west of Holtzclaw Avenue.
Citico Line:
From the
National Cemetery, the Belt Line proceeded north along what’s now Holtclaw
Avenue , while the main line of Orchard Knob Division turned east at Vine
Street. This spur line ultimately junctioning with the ETV&G (later SOU)
just east of its Citico Yards after crossing the W&A and the CS was known
as Citico Division. The Belt Line also junctioned with the W&A and
the CNO&TP in the vicnity.
*Avondale
Almost certainly a signal stop, shared with the
CNO&TP, this depot stood near the Holtzclaw Avenue-Citico Avenue crossroads
and its junction with the other railroad.
The post
office of Avondale operated 1894 to 1905.
*Citico
Junction
This was a
station at the junction of the Belt Line with the ETV&G that became the
foundation for the Citico, now Debutts, Yards. The station is gone but it
remains a point on the railway.
Bald
Knob/Orchard Knob
This station stood north of the crossing
of Orchard Knob Avenue, in the northwest corner of the intersection with Vine Street. The depot still exists, having been used as a home for decades, and is being restored.
The post
office of Orchard Knob operated from 1888 until 1894, when it was moved to
Highland Park.
Indian
Springs
When the
Belt Line was constructed, Glenwood did not exist. The southern portion
was called Suburba because of the post office on the Mission Ridge Incline
Railway, while the northern portion was known as Indian Springs after
the internment camp there during the Cherokee Removal. The
depot was located at the Harrison Avenue (now East 3rd Street) crossing.
Stanleytown/Churchville
This depot was
located at the current intersection of Cleveland Avenue and Dodson Avenue, the
original terminus of this line.
Tinker’s Junction
The depot
stood at intersection of Bradt Street and Wilcox Boulevard (once named Tinker
Street); there was a side-track to the northwest.
Jefferson Street
This depot
stood at the intersection of Jefferson Street (the modern Ocoee Street) with
Harrison Pike/Dodson Avenue.
Sherman Heights
This depot
was at northeast corner of the junction of the Belt Line with the ETV&G at
the Wheeler Avenue crossing.
For more
information, see East Chattanooga under the section on the Western and Atlantic
Railroad.
Boyce
The Belt
Line used the Western & Atlantic-Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific
depot here. When the Union Railway of
Chattanooga operated the Belt Line it crossed both sets of tracks of the two
long-distance railroads and formed a siding on the northwest side of the depot.
For more
information, see Boyce under the section on the Western & Atlantic Railroad.
Ridgedale Division
Park Place
See Orchard
Knob Division.
National Cemetery
See Orchard
Knob Division.
Henderson Station/Highland Park
The most
important of Highland Park’s stops
was initially at the southern corner of East 12th Street and South Holtzclaw
Avenue and served both Highland Park and the cemetery. It later moved two blocks north to stand
inside the curve of Anderson Avenue, which the railway followed, off Holtzclaw.
The post
office of Highland Park was established in 1894 when it moved from Orchard Knob
and operated until 1898, when it was moved to Chattanooga.
Hickory Street
This depot
stood at the northwest corner of the intersection of South Hickory Street and Anderson
Avenue.
Francis Avenue/Eden Park
Willow Street south of Anderson Avenue was originally
known as Francis Avenue, which means that the depot here would have been at one
of the two southern corners of this intersection. The stop was also called Eden Park Station.
Ridgedale Junction
This depot at the northeast corner of Bruce (East 12th) Street
and Buckley Street first supported the beginning of the spur-line of the Missionary Ridge Incline
Railway, a steam dummy railway from 1887 until 1889 later purchased by the
Chattanooga Electric Railway.
Ridgedale
This depot stood at the northwest corner of Montgomery
Avenue (East Main Street) and Buckley Street.
The post
office of Ridgedale operated from 1887 until 1903, when it moved to
Chattanooga.
Smith Street
This
station would have been in the middle of the 1800 block of East 18th Street
behind Standard Catoosa Thatcher Building, which faces South Watkins Street.
Fort Cheatham
This station like stood at Palmetto (East 23rd) and Railroad
Streets.
The area thus named under the mistaken belief that the
Civil War era redoubt here was held by Confederate Maj. Gen. Frank Cheatham. In fact, it was actually held by Maj. Gen.
John Breckenridge. Maj. Gen. Cheatham
did have a redoubt as a command post in the area, only during the occupation of
the area in the summer of 1863 by the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, and the
one he actually built and occupied was that later held by the Union’s Army of
the Cumberland, who renamed it Fort Negley, then Fort Phelps.
Battle Ground Station
This station stood at approximately the southwest corner of 10th Avenue and East 32th Street where Mohawk Canoes now sits. It was at the north end of a loop of the tracks around the community of East Lake, which included a stretch through the park. At the south end of the loop was a wye allowing trains to go either north or south.
Grandview Station
This
station stood at the intersection of East 32nd Street and 15th Avenue, at the
north edge of the garden at the later site of East Lake Park (created by C.E.
James and donated to the City of Chattanooga in 1896), on the back side of the
loop mentioned under Fort Cheatham.
Here, it not only served the needs of the garden’s visitors but of guests
of the hotel built on the side of the ridge above. The former trolley station survives as a
private residence at 3202 15th Avenue.
East Lake
This depot stood the intersection of East 37th Street and 7th
Avenue, about halfway between Grandview Station and Rossville Road.
The post
office of East Lake operated from 1903 until 1912, when it moved to
Chattanooga.
Ratcliff Division
This division was later discontinued as a separate division
but continued as the East End and Oak Hills Line of the Ridgedale Division.
Park Place
See Orchard
Knob Division.
Montgomery Avenue
The depot
here stood at the southwest corner of what are now East Main Street (Montgomery
Avenue then) and South Holtzclaw Avenue.
Rossville Road
This depot
stood west of the tracks at what is now 1200 Rossville Avenue, currently
occupied by Mill Direct International.
C.R.&C
(Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus) Crossing
This station stood where the Belt Line crossed the CR&C
Railroad (later Central of Georgia Railway, COG).
Clifton
This station at the East 30th Street crossing, named for
the suburb of Clifton Hills which it primarily served.
Ratcliff Station
This
station west of tracks stood at 34th and Calhoun Avenue. The Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus Railroad
(later Central of Georgia Railway), who shared the station, called it East End. It was the more important of this once
prominent suburb’s two stops on the Belt Line.
The post office of East End operated here from 1888 until 1895, when it moved to Chattanooga.
East End
This depot
stood south of the tracks on the southeast corner of what are now Rossville
Boulevard and East 44th Street.
Richardson
Station
This depot was probably halfway between East End and East
Lake.
East Lake
See
Ridgedale Division.
Grandview
See
Ridgedale Division.
Mountain Division
Later referred to as the Lookout Mountain Division.
Park Place
See Orchard
Knob Division.
Montgomery Avenue
See
Radcliff Division.
Rossville Road
See
Radcliff Division.
Just east of the northeast corner of Forest Hills
Cemetery, the tracks of this division split, one continuing south, the Oak Hills
Branch, and the other to the west, the St. Elmo Branch.
Oak
Hills Branch:
*Oak Hills
This depot
stood at the end of the side track where the Union Railway had their shops, now
a lot on West 42nd Street that is part of PODS Moving and Storage, across the
tracks from the main facility at 4210 Oakland Avenue. The Union Railway had its car sheds and shops
here, and the Oak Hills community grew up from the railroad’s employees moving
nearby. While the Union Railway operated
the station, they called it Oak Hills.
After the Union Railway went out of business, Chattanooga Southern
Railway renamed the station and yards Alton Park and Chattanooga Rapid Transit also adopted the name.
The post
office of Alton Park operated from 1895 until 1915, when it moved to Signal
Mountain, of all places.
Doty’s Junction
This
depot stood at the junction of the Union Railway with the Central of Georgia
Railway (COG). From there, the east wing of this division continued south then turned west to link up with its west wing in a wye junction just south of Mountain Junction depot.
Poeville Junction/Arlington
This station
was established to serve the Poeville community, a suburb begun in 1883 by Squire
William Poe (Squire being the title of members of the county court). Here the Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railroad,
which traveled over the Belt Line from its Fort Street Depot (later from Union Depot)
transferred from its narrow gauge locomotive and cars to the Broad Gauge versions
from which it got its nickname. The name
was later changed after another planned development begun in 1891.
The depot stood
near Burnt Mill Bridge.
The
post office of Poeville operated in the vicinity from 1883 until 1891, when it
was moved to Chattanooga.
Thurman Station
This depot stood on the Thurman family property at the
junction of the Belt Line with Chattanooga Southern Railway and its successors,
probably inside the wye junction from which Mountain Junction got its name, formed
by two the two branches of the Mountain Division and the spur line to Blowing
Springs, Georgia. The station was inside
the southeastern point of the wye. At
the time Beulah Avenue did not come south past the intersection of Blowing
Springs Road and Lee Avenue.
St. Elmo Branch:
Returning
to the split , we continue on this branch.
Forest Hills Cemetery
The depot
here stood conveniently at the entrance to the cemetery, where many of the
area’s most prominent citizens have been buried. One is John Wilder, the Union general and post-bellum
industrialist who among other things owned Roane Iron Company which built much
of Chattanooga and employed many of its citizens. Another is John S. Lovell, nephew of William
“Uncle Bill” Lewis and an entrepeneur in his own right, who raised horses in
East Chattanooga, dealt in real estate with his uncle, and owned the Mahogany
Inn, a three-story establishment that stood where Miller Park is now,
conveniently located near the Union Depot.
*Lookout Point Incline Railroad
From the Forest Hills depot, the Lookout Mountain Incline
Branch ran from the main line to this depot at the foot of the Lookout Point
Incline Railroad, the first incline cable railway on Lookout Mountain, one which
no longer exists and often referred to as Incline No. 1. The depot at the bottom on the incline stood in
what is now a parking lot for the Chattanooga Medicine Company at 1715 West
38th Street, at the northeast corner of the intersection with Church Street.
St. Elmo
Known as
the 5th Street Depot because of its location at the southwest corner of the intersection
of what is now West 43rd Street (then 5th Street) and Virginia Avenue, formerly
the route of the Belt Line through St. Elmo, this was St. Elmo’s primary
station.
The name
St. Elmo comes from a novel written by Augusta Jane Evans, one of the pillars
of Southern literature in the 19th century.
It was especially popular here because it takes place in Chattanooga. The community acquired the name from the eponymous
mansion of Abraham Johnson here. Until
1885 when it was sold, it had been the name of the Warner home atop the
mountain, and as soon as the name became available, Johnson bestowed it on his
place.
When Col.
Johnson died in 1903, he left the property across from his home for an
Episcopal church to be built in memory of his wife, Thankful Anderson Whiteside
Johnson, daughter of railroad leader Col. James Whiteside. Thus do we have Thankful Memorial Episcopal
Church at 1607 West 43rd Street.
The post
office was established as Kirklin in 1882, changing to St. Elmo in 1898, and moving
to Chattanooga in 1898.
Beulah
This depot most
likely stood at the intersection of Beulah Avenue with Virginia Avenue.
Mountain Junction
This depot, later called Lookout Junction, marked the
beginning of the Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railway, which used the
Belt Line to get here from Union Depot.
It stood at the southeast corner of Virginia Avenue, then called
Railroad Avenue because the Belt Line ran along it, with the original Virginia Avenue (which no
longer exists) between Beulah Avenue and what was then Georgia Avenue but is
now St. Elmo Avenue.
The post
office of Hustle was established in 1893, changing its name to Mountain
Junction nine months later. In 1895,
postal service moved to Chattanooga.
From here, one line turned east to the wye junction at
Thurman’s Station while the main line continued south.
Woodburn
One-third
of a mile south of the Tennessee stateline, this depot’s main reason for
existence was to serve company housing for employees of the Lookout Sewer Pipe
Company, named for M.A. Woodburn, founder of that company.
Blowing Spring
The depot
here stood at the crossing of what is now Pipe Shop Road about where Premier
Pattern and Machine now sits. The
factory of the Lookout Sewer Pipe Company was located here, and its other
attraction was Blowing Springs Cave, discovered by Chattanoogans when many of
them lived at the refugee camp here during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878.
After Passenger Service Ended
When Chattanooga Railways discontinued service on the former Union Railway lines leased from AGS, those reverted to that railroad for its Belt Railway of Chattanooga local haul freight line. The Belt Railway operated the following lines: Newby Street Division, Citico Division, River Division, East Lake Division, Alton Park Division, St. Elmo Division, Georgia Division, and Boyce Division.
LOOKOUT POINT INCLINE
RAILROAD and MOUNT LOOKOUT RAILWAY, 1886
Point
Lookout became an attraction long before the National Park existed. Visitors began to increase after Chattanooga
residents flocked to the mountain to escape the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. Harriet Whiteside, widow of railway and
business magnate James Whiteside, owned the only stable road up the mountain,
Whiteside Turnpike, the use of which she began to charge a hefty fee for. When a group of entrepeneurs built another
road to reach the summit, the Lookout Mountain Turnpike (now Ochs Highway), and
offered its use at half the fee, Harriet fenced off access to the Point, which
she also owned.
Another
group, including some of the rival turnpike crowd, built the Lookout Point
Incline Railroad, commonly called Incline No. 1, to a spot just under the Point
in 1886. Its base was next to
Chattanooga Medicine Company in St. Elmo.
The
following year this group began operating a narrow gauge railroad on the
summit, the Mount Lookout Railway, commonly referred to as the Narrow
Gauge. Its tracks ran along the path now
called the Bluff Trail.
The
modernistic Point Hotel of several stories and wraparound porches opened in
1888, with a depot on the east for Incline No. 1 and on the west for the Narrow
Gauge.
Both
Incline No. 1 and the Narrow Gauge ended service in 1899. Its rival, Lookout Incline and Lula Lake
Railway, electrified the Narrow Gauge and operated the line as Lookout Mountain Local well into the
20th century after being bought by Chattanooga Rapid Transit in April 1901.
The
stations on the Mount Lookout Railway were as follows.
Point Lookout Hotel
The hotel
served as the terminal for this railway and for Incline No. 1.
Sunset Park
This depot
was at the park above Sunset Rock on the West Brow. At the turn of the century, there was also a
Sunrise Park on the East Brow, east of what is now the eastern north-south
stretch of Fairyland Trail.
Natural Bridge
This depot
was at the formerly neglected natural rock formation on the mountaintop that
has been rehabilitated in the last few years and is now the center of Natural
Bridge Park. The ravine in which this
feature lies is behind the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. The Natural Bridge is 85 feet long and 15
feet tall.
ROSSVILLE & CHATTANOOGA
RAILROAD, 1886
This local railroad
was planned between the city’s corporation limits and the Georgia state line with
a right-of-way along the east side of Rossville Road.
MISSION RIDGE INCLINE
RAILWAY, 1887
Mission
Ridge Incline Railway began as a Forney locomotive operation in 1887, beginning
at Ridgedale Junction on the Belt Line. The
railway had one locomotive, named for its owner, The George Sherwood. The
Chattanooga Electric Street Railroad Company purchased a controlling interest the
line in 1889 and electrified it. Trolley
service ran until 1945.
While many
have claimed the exact route is unknown, the Platt map books in the local
history section of the Chattanooga Public Library show that very thing. With the exception of Suburba in the 1904
edition, however, none of the stations on the line are shown.
Other than
Ridgedale Junction, Suburba, and Bragg’s Headquarters, these locations are
either vague or only speculative.
Ridgedale Junction
This depot
marked the beginning of the spur line leading up the ridge that formed the
Mission Ridge Incline Railway.
For more
information, see the section on Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Suburba/McCallie Avenue
This
station, later called McCallie Avenue, was indeed on that street at the
time. Or, rather, opposite the end of it
at the beginning of the curve where it turned into Shallowford Road. Not too many years ago, before McCallie
Avenue at the west mouth of the Missionary Ridge Tunnel was redesigned, after
coming around this curve coming down from the ridge into town the street became
McCallie Avenue at that point. At the
time of the Belt Line, the street was McCallie Avenue from its intersection
with Bird’s Mill Road on the ridgeside.
The post
office of Suburba operated here from 1885 to 1901.
Indian Springs
Not the
better known feature at the western foot of the ridge, these springs were probably
at what was supposed to be a public park between Spring Street (Rose Terrace) and
Bird’s Mill Road (Rosemont Drive), named appropriately Spring Park.
Shallow Ford
My best
guess is that this station was at Shallow Ford Gap and the road over it into
the Chickamauga Valley.
The length
of Rockmeade Drive-Audobon Drive-Vista Drive-Tunnel Boulevard was once known as
Shallow Ford Road, but also as Cleveland Pike.
The entire length of Cleveland Avenue, even west to East End (Central)
Avenue was also known as Shallowford Road, by the way. What’s more, Cleveland Pike was also a name
for Lightfoot Mill Road before and after it intersected with what is now Tunnel
Boulevard before continuing east over much of what is now Bonny Oaks Drive.
During the
Civil War, there was an engagement at Shallow Ford Gap on Missionary Ridge on
22 September 1863 in the aftermath of the Battle of Chickamauga.
*Bird’s Mill Hack Line
In its
second year, the company established a hack line (specific route between two points
with a small two-horse stagecoach) from the top on Mission Ridge down Bird’s Mill
Road to Bird’s Mill, which besides being one of the best mills in the county was
a popular recreation spot, with the eventual goal, never realized, of building a
spur line. It probably left the ridge from
the Shallow Ford stop.
Crescent Hill
I have seen this marked as a feature on some map of the Civil War battle or the siege, but cannot remember where I saw it or exactly where it was.
Bragg’s Headquarters
This area,
where Gen. Braxton Bragg, general commanding of the (Confederate) Army of
Tennesssee, had his headquarters during the Siege and Battles of Chattanooga, became part of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga
National Military Park, and was located the same place as the Bragg Reservation
of the park is today. Missionary Ridge
School once stood above my grandparents’ house at the reservation’s eastern
side where Tri-State Mobile Welding is now.
Happy Hollow
This
station was about halfway between Bragg’s Hill and Fountain Park/Thurman Springs.
Fountain
Park/Thurman Springs
The original terminus of the Mission Ridge Incline Railway
was the stop for this free park with swings, a croquet pitch, seats for 500
people, and a fountain powered by Thurman Springs 40 feet above the park on the
ridge, the tracks ending just before the last point at which East View Drive
meets South Crest Road going south; from this point to East Shadowlawn Drive it
was originally called Spring Street. After Chattanooga Electric Railway bought
the line, they closed the park and changed to name of the stop.
MISSION RIDGE NARROW GAUGE
RAILROAD, 1888
Owned
by the same company that built and first operated the Mission Ridge Incline, this
extended line was to run from Fountain Park to the popular recreation spot at Green’s
Lake (formerly Newnan Springs, formerly McAfee Springs, later Lake Winnepesaukah).
The entire roadbed was graded, but for unknown
reasons the line was never built, but it was most likely shortage of funds.
Plans to build this line arose again in 1902, this time
with the intention of continuing the line from Green’s Lake to Chickamauga Park,
but this too never happened.
CHATTANOOGA, ROME, & COLUMBUS RAILROAD, 1888
In 1881,
the Rome & Carrolton Railroad Company was chartered to build a railway
between these towns. The company
restructured in 1888 and built the Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus Railroad
(CRC) into our city, but no tracks were ever laid southward beyond Carrollton. The railway was sold in 1897 and renamed the
Chattanooga, Rome, & Southern Railroad (CRS). Under that name, the railroad purchased Chickamauga & Durham Railroad in 1900. After another exchange of ownership in 1901, the line became part of the
Central of Georgia Railway (COG).
Southern Railway Company (SR) acquired a controlling interest of the
railroad in 1963, which it merged with four other Georgia railroads into a
single entity named the Central of Georgia Railroad in 1971, which survived as
a separate entity after the merger of the parent company into Norfolk-Southern
Railway in 1982.
The CRC originally used the Belt Line’s Georgia Avenue
Station as its Chattanooga terminal, later the Queen & Crescent’s Central Passenger
Depot then Southern Railway’s Terminal Station.
Lafayette
The depot at
this schedule stop stood across the street from the restored Mars Theater,
which stands at 117 North Chattanooga
Street.
Founded as
Chattooga in 1835 to be the seat of Walker County, which then included Dade and
Catoosa Counties, this city’s named changed to Lafayette in 1836 in honor of
the former marquis thereof, Gilbert du Motier (he gave up his title), hero of
the American Revolution and of the French Revolution, close friend of Thomas
Paine, and one of the two officers who escorted the royal Bourbon couple, Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette, away from the destruction of Versailles, the other
being a guy surnamed Bonaparte.
During the
Civil War, the Battle of Lafayette was fought here 24 June 1864 during the
Atlanta Campaign. There were also
engagements here on 14 September 1863 in the run-up to the Battle of
Chickamauga, and on 12 October 1864 during the Nashville Campaign.
Lafayette today
is headquarters for the short-line Chattooga & Chickamauga Railway, which
runs from Summerville to Chickamauga.
The post
office of Lafayette was established in 1837.
Warrens Station
This schedule
stop stood three miles down from Lafayette in the community of Salem, probably
at the West Warren Road crossing of the railway.
The post
office of Salem operated from 1870 until 1898.
Copeland Station
This schedule
stop stood three miles down from Salem in the community of Noble, possibly at
the Glass Road crossing.
The post
office of Noble operated from 1892 until 1912.
Rock Spring
This schedule
stop stood three miles down from
Copeland.
The post
office of Rock Spring was established in 1837.
Chickamauga
This schedule
stop was first named Crawfish Springs after the community in which it sat,
named for the huge springs here. In
1891, the town incorporated as Chickamauga to take advantage of its proximity
to the Chickamauga Battlefield Reservation, and the name of the station changed
with it. The fine stone depot, built in
1891, remains, serving as a museum and visitors’ center.
Before the Cherokee
Removal, the site served as the seat of the judicial and legislative division
of the Cherokee Nation East known as the Chickamauga District, whose boundaries
included Hamilton County to the Tennessee River and Ooltewah (Wolftever) Creek,
as well as Marion County to the river and large parts of Northwest Georgia and
Northeast Alabama. The judge for the
Chickamauga District was none other than John Brown of Brown’s Tavern, Brown’s
Ferry, and Brown’s Landing in the north of Lookout Valley; Brown also served
briefly as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West in 1839.
During the
Civil War, several encounters took place in the vicinity, the closest being at
Lee and Gordon’s Mill 11-13 September 1863 and another at the same place 16
September 1863, and a bit further away, the Battle of the Chickamauga, fought
18-20 September 1863.
Chickamauga
today is the northern terminus of the Chattooga and Chickamauga Railway.
The post
office of Crawfish Springs was established in 1877, the name changing to
Chickamauga in 1890. There was another
post office in Walker County called Chickamauga from 1836 until 1837 which served
the antebellum community of East Chickamauga, but that area went with Catoosa
County when it separated in 1853.
Lytle
The schedule
stop in this community was originally known as Battlefield Station, because the
Chickamauga Battlefield Reservation was its reason for existence. That remained the name well into the 20th
century, when it changed to Lytle. The
depot stood across the tracks from the headquarters for the Reservation, and
the National Park after that.
During the
Civil War, the battlefield above was the site of the bloody Battle of the
Chickamauga, as the Union called it, or the Battle of Mud Flats, as the
Confederacy called it, fought 18-20 September 1863. With the highest per capita body count, it
was the bloodiest two-and-a-half days of the entire war.
The post
office of Lytle operated from 1890 until 1910.
Mission Ridge
Three miles
north lay this schedule stop east of Missionary Ridge, south of the eastern
mouth of McFarland’s Gap. The wye
junction with the spur line to Fort Oglethorpe army post was just north of
here.
The post
office of Mission Ridge operated from 1878 to 1904.
Brumby
This station, just a little above Mission Ridge Station, was established primarily to serve the junction of the railroad with its spur to Fort Oglethorpe.
Fort Oglethorpe
In 1914,
COG constructed a spur line to the U.S. Army fort so-named, which also served
the eponymous town that had begun to grow north of it and swallow up the tiny unincorporated community of Dodge.
The
original community at the site was called Hargrave. During the Spanish-American War, Camp Thomas,
the primary training facility and departure point for troops going to Cuba, was
here. The army established Chickamauga
Post for the 6th Cavalry in 1902, which became Fort Oglethorpe in 1904. Fort Oglethorpe served as a boot camp during
both world wars, and as a prison camp for German POWs of both wars. In the Second World War, it was the primary
training center for the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). During the Depression, the State of Georgia
imprisoned workers here during the Great Textile Strike of 1934.
The post
office of Fort Oglethorpe was established in 1917.
Rossville
The depot at
this schedule stop stood at the southern end of the island surrounded by the
railway to the east, West State Street to the west, West Gordon Avenue to the
north and West Lake Avenue to the south.
Initially intended primarily for passenger service, manufacturing
interests took advantage of this to build their factories sited for easy access
on either side of the station and provided the bulk of traffic in the first
half of the 20th century. Park Woolen
Mill stood on the east and Richmond Hosiery Mill stood on the west.
The post
office here was established by Thomas McFarland in 1835. Despite the fact that the area was known as
Popular Springs, he named it Rossville since he ran it out of his home, the
former John Ross House. Gradually the
community adopted the name of the post office.
This post office continues to this day.
An earlier
post office here was also named Rossville, established in the Cherokee Nation
in 1817 with John Ross, the later Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation East whose
house lay directly on the Federal Road, as postmaster. It moved into what is now Tennessee in 1827,
and again in 1834 to the mission on Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek)
across from Old Chickamauga Town of the Cherokee under the name Brainerd. It closed in 1838 along with the mission of
the same name at the Cherokee Removal to Indian Territory.
East End
CRC and its
successors used the Radcliff depot of the Belt Line at this schedule stop but
called it East End, which was the name of the community here.
For more
information, see the entries for Radcliff Station and East End under Radcliff
Division in the section on Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Chattanooga
The CRC and
its successors used the Central Depot then Terminal Station as its terminals in
Chattanooga.
For more
Chattanooga information, see the sections on the Western & Atlantic Railroad
and the Chattanooga Extension Railroad.
CHATTANOOGA & LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN RAILWAY, 1889
Known
popularly as the Broad Gauge to distinguish it from its narrow-gauge rival
Mount Lookout Railway, this standard-gauge railroad began service to Lookout
Mountain in January 1889 to take advantage of the growing interest in visiting
its attractions. Its chief developer was
Richard Watkins.
After 1899, the entire line was purchased by Lookout Incline & Lula Lake Railway and electrified. In April 1901, its parent company was purchased by Chattanooga Rapid Transit and operated as the Surface Car Line until August 1928, when it was replaced by a motorbus.
The railway’s first terminal in Chattanooga was the Belt
Line’s Fort Street Station. When it began
to make multiple runs per day, it began also also the Belt Line’s Newby Street Station,
later consolidating operations at Georgia Avenue Station before finally operating
out of Union Depot.
The
mountain has been the site of two major military engagements in local
history.
The first
took place in 1788 along the stretch of the Great Indian Warpath over the
mountain’s bench (now Old Wauhatchie Pike).
Joseph Martin’s militia from the State of Franklin were routed by the
Chickamauga Cherokee defending the withdrawal of their fellow militant Cherokee
from the Chickamauga towns to the Five Lower Towns area.
The second,
of course, was the Battle of Lookout Mountain on 24 November 1863.
The post
office of Lookout Mountain was established in 1867. The town of Lookout Mountain was incorporated
in 1890.
The
Guild-Hardy Trail on the mountain follows most of this railway’s former
roadbed.
Fort Street Depot
Formerly the original terminal for the Belt Line, this was
the home base for the Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railway. The railway used the Belt Line to get to the
beginning of its own tracks and stopped at some of its stations, but those are
covered under Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Mountain Junction
This was
the beginning of the railway’s wholly-owned tracks.
See the
Mountain Division in the section on the Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Chetolah
The first
stop on the mountain. It may have been
at the switch-back on the western side.
Cravens Terrace
The site of
the Robert Cravens House of Civil War battle fame.
Lookout Mountain House
This hotel
stood on Stonedge Road. The hotel open
in 1875 and burned in 1890. It was later
the site of home of Jerome Pound, co-founder of Chattanooga News along with W. M. Bearden and later mayor of
Lookout Mountain, which he named “Stonedge”.
Ross Avenue
This street
is now South Hermitage Avenue. The depot
stood west of the street and north of the tracks.
Stone’s Cottage
An inn
between Ross Avenue and the Natural Bridge.
Natural Bridge
This
physical feature lies southwest of the intersection of South Bragg Avenue and
Fleetwood Drive. Its attraction was such
that a man named Joseph McCullough built the Natural Bridge Hotel here in 1884,
though the effort folded in 1888.
Glen View
This was a
subdivision south of East and West Road and Sunset Road West down to the
stateline; much of its planned extent later became Fairyland. The depot was in Spring Park opposite the end
of Tasso Street, what today is the northern east-west stretch of Mitchell
Drive.
Clift’s Station
The
location of this station is unclear; it may have been next to the old post
office, which was then halfway between Glen View Station and Hunt’s Station.
Hunt’s Station
In the
vicinity of where North Watauga Lane intersects with Scenic Highway; Hunt’s
Eastern Addition lay just to the west.
Sunset Rock Station
Sunset Park
on West Brow Road was serviced by the rival Narrow Gauge; the depot for this
railway, the Broad Gauge, was some distance to the east.
Lookout Inn
This
massive 450-room luxury hotel overlooking Chattanooga took up an entire half
block between Morrison Street SW, Lee Avenue, and North Bragg Avenue. The station for the railway, and later for
Incline No. 2, was at the end of a spur which brought passengers directly in
front of the hotel; the junction was on Depot Street East. Opened in 1890, the hotel, previously thought
inflammable, burned in 1908.
Point Park
After the
National Park opened, the railway extended its line to Park Street, which is
now Point Park Road.
CHATTANOOGA & CHICKAMAUGA
NATIONAL PARK RAILROAD, 1890
This local railroad
was envisioned to branch of the Mountain Division of Chattanooga Union Railway and
pass through McFarland’s Gap, traveling east toward a terminus at Snodgrass Hill
in the park, with the intention of later extending to Ringgold, Georgia, and possibly
beyond.
NASHVILLE, CHATTANOOGA, & ST. LOUIS RAILWAY, 1890
This railroad began life as Nashville & Chattanooga
Railroad as mentioned above in 1851.
After the war, the company acquired Nashville & Northwestern Railroad
and Hickman & Obion Railroad, reincorporated as NC&StL in 1873, and bought
Tennessee & Pacific Railroad in 1877.
Rival railroad Louisville & Nashville Railroad acquired a
controlling interest in 1880. In
1890, NC&StL purchased from the State of Georgia the lease for the Western and
Atlantic Railroad.
L&N itself was purchased by Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1902, though both it and NC&StL continued to operate separately. NC&StL and L&N finally merged together in 1957. In 1982, ACL was bought by Seaboard System Railroad, which was renamed CSX Transportation in 1986.
CHATTANOOGA
SOUTHERN RAILWAY, 1891
Initially the
Chattanooga Southern Railway (CS) was intended entirely to provide freight
service for iron ore, coal, and lumber out of the region between Chattanooga
and Gadsden, Alabama, but after a few years added passenger service. In 1895 the company reorganized as the
Chattanooga Southern Railroad (also CS), which C.E. James reorganized again in
1911 as the Tennessee, Alabama, & Georgia Railway (TAG). Southern Railway purchased the railway in
1971 and integrated it and its assets.
Very little has been
written about Chattanooga Southern or TAG.
Its first terminal in Chattanooga was Georgia Avenue Station, and the
distances in the entries below from “Chattanooga” mean to that. Its later Chattanooga terminus was Union Depot. Also, there was an unusual number of coupon
stations and signal stations on this line.
Some of the names below exist only as placenames on a map,
and some do not even retain that much life.
Gadsden
In the seat of Etowah County, Alabama, this coupon station
91.7 miles from Chattanooga was the southern terminus of the railroad.
The post office of Gadsden has operated since 1846.
East Gadsden
This signal stop stood across Coosa River from Gadsden.
The post office of East Gadsden operated 1891-1905.
Agricola
This signal stop 88.6 miles from Chattanooga.
Wilsonia
This one time schedule station downgraded to a signal stop
stood 83.4 miles from Chattanooga.
Owens
This signal stop stood 79.5 miles from Chattanooga.
Cox’s
This one-time schedule stop downgraded to signal stop stood
78 miles from Chattanooga.
Bristow
This schedule station, the first in Cherokee County,
Alabama, coming north from Gadsden, stood 73.4 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Bristow operated 1892-1906.
Blue Pond
A community whose only evidence of existence is a road
bearing its name, this coupon station stood 68.8 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Blue Pond operated 1850-1907.
Little River
This schedule station stood 65.1 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Little River operated 1858-1875.
Congo
This schedule station stood 63.2 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Congo operated 1892-1909.
Loop
This signal stop stood 61.7 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Loop operated 1893-1929.
Pleasanton
Originally known as Pleasant Hill, this one-time schedule
station downgraded to signal stop stood 61.0 miles from Chattanooga.
Taff
This schedule station stood 59.6 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Taff operated 1886-1941.
Blanche
This schedule station stood 57.5 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Blanche operated 1891-1951.
Jamestown
This schedule station stood 55.1 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Jamestown operated 1891-1974.
Burgess
This signal stop stood 51.0 miles from Chattanooga.
Chesterfield
This schedule station, the last stop in Alabama, stood 50.0
miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Chesterfield operated 1888-1911.
Menlo
The coupon station in this small city (population 46) in
Chattooga County, Georgia, stood 46.2 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Menlo, Georgia, has operated since 1886.
Chelsea
This schedule station stood 42.8 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Chelsea operated 1890-1928.
Merritt
This signal stop stood 41.6 miles from Chattanooga.
Teloga
This one-time schedule station downgraded to signal stop
stood 39.6 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Teloga Springs operated 1837-1890; the
post office continued as simply Teloga 1891-1927.
Harrisburg
This schedule station stood 37.2 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Harrisburg, Walker Co., operated
1891-1929.
Hawkins
This signal stop stood 35.7 miles from Chattanooga.
McConnellsville
This one-time schedule station downgraded to signal stop
stood 35 miles from Chattanooga.
Sharpe
This signal stop stood 33.0 miles from Chattanooga.
Bronco
This schedule station stood 31.5 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Bronco operated 1884-1905
Chamberlain
This schedule station stood 29.7 miles from Chattanooga.
Hobbs
This signal stop stood 29.3 miles from Chattanooga.
Hillsdale
This schedule station stood 28.1 miles from Chattanooga.
Patton
This signal stop stood 27.3 miles from Chattanooga.
Marsh
This signal stop stood 27.2 miles from Chattanooga.
Shinbone
This signal stop stood 26.6 miles from Chattanooga.
Tunnel
This signal stop stood 25.2 miles from Chattanooga.
Owl Hollow
This signal stop stood 24.8 miles from Chattanooga.
Estelle
This schedule station stood 24.1 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Estelle operated 1883-1905.
Archer
This signal stop stood 22.8 miles from Chattanooga.
Kensington
This coupon station stood 21.8 miles from Chattanooga.
Kensington was
established by a group of businessmen from Kensington, Pennsylvania, who began a
hotel and resort here in 1890, with plans for an industrial town. There was a broom and furniture factory here, and
there may have a small mill.
By the turn
of the century, Kensington Hotel had become a boarding house, though the area remained
a popular recreation destiny well into the 20th century, enough for the Chattanooga
Automobile Association to buy the former hotel for their headquarters in 1910 and
for the highway commission of Hamilton County, Tennessee, to authorize a Chattanooga-Kensington
Pike down Whiteside Street through St. Elmo to Kensington in 1915.
There was a
Kensington School well into the 1900s, as well as a Kensington High School into
the first decade of the 20th century.
Kensington United
Methodist Church moved here from Cassandra in 1890.
The post office of Kensington operated 1890-1965.
Cassandra
This schedule station stood 20.0 miles from Chattanooga.
A water-powered iron furnace seems to have been the center
of this community. Cassandra Methodist Church
organized at Hiniard’s, later Bailey’s, Cross Roads here as Payne’s Chapel before
the War of the Rebellion, moving to Kensington and changing its name in 1890.
The post office of Cassandra operated 1855-1950.
Cooper Heights
This one-time schedule station downgraded to signal stop stood
18.3 miles from Chattanooga.
The post office of Cooper Heights operated 1891-1951.
Mallicoat
This signal stop stood 17.0 miles from Chattanooga.
Henrys
This signal stop stood 16 miles from Chattanooga.
Kendrick
This signal stop stood 15.4 miles from Chattanooga.
High Point
This schedule station originally named Lisbon stood 14.1 miles
from Chattanooga.
The post office of High Point operated 1856-1922.
Costello
This signal stop stood 12.7 miles from Chattanooga.
Wessboro
This schedule station downgraded to signal stop stood 12 miles
from Chattanooga.
The post office of Wessboro operated in 1891.
Cenchant
At first called
Durham Junction, the depot at this coupon station stood at the Nickajack Road
crossing, four miles northwest of Chickamauga and 11 miles from Chattanooga.
The original name
derived from its being the junction for the CRC with the Chickamauga & Durham
Railroad. A community grew up around the
busy depot, but it now exists mostly as a geographic place-name.
The post office of
Cenchat operated from 1902 until 1909.
Eagle Cliff
A mile-and-a-quarter
down the line toward Chattanooga stood this schedule stop 9.9 miles from
Chattanooga in the community for which it was named. The community was named for the eponymous
cliff on Lookout Mountain which served as a home for eagles; the community now
goes by the name Valley View, but its central street is called Eagle Cliff
Drive.
The post office of
Eagle Cliff operated from 1860 until 1904.
Moonsboro
A half mile further
stood this one-time schedule station downgraded to signal stop 9.5 miles from
Chattanooga, named for the community here which now goes simply by the name
Moons. Chattanooga Valley High and
Elementary Schools are here today.
Flintstone
Another mile down
stood this schedule station 8.4 miles from Chattanooga, the most important in of
the upper Chattanooga Valley. The
residential part of the community now concentrates adjacent to Chattanooga
Valley Road.
The post office of
Flintstone was established in 1891.
Rock Creek
This one-time schedule
station downgraded to signal stop stood three-quarters-of-a-mile down from
Flintstone, probably at the crossing of Rock Creek Road.
Woodburn
This signal stop was
one-third of a mile south of the Tennessee stateline.
For more
information, see the entry for this station under Mountain Division in the
section on the Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Endline
The first station in
Hamilton County, Tennessee, the small depot at this schedule stop stood north
of West 57th Street halfway between Tennessee Avenue and St. Elmo Avenue. A big tree now stands there. At some point TAG changed the name of this
station to St. Elmo.
The post office of
Endline operated from 1897 until 1900, when it was moved to St. Elmo.
Dickey
This signal stop
stood 6.3 miles from Chattanooga.
Thurman’s Station
Standing 6 miles
from Chattanooga, this schedule stop, later downgraded to signal stop before
being abandoned, primarily served the junction of this railway with the Belt
Line.
For more
information, see the entry for this station in the Mountain Division of the
section on the Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Alton Park
CS used the Belt
Line’s depot (Oak Hill) 3.5 miles from
Chattanooga but called their schedule stop Alton Park. After the Belt Line went under, CS took full
control of operations at both the depot and the yards, the latter of which it
expanded greatly, Alton Park became the sole name.
For more
information, see the entry for Oak Hill in the Mountain Division under the
section on the Union Railway of Chattanooga.
Cravens
For information on
this station, see the section on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad.
Chattanooga
CS initially ended
its trips to Chattanooga at Newby Street Depot originally constructed for the
Union Railway, but soon switched to using Union Depot, as did TAG.
For more
information, see the entry for Chattanooga under the Western & Atlantic
Railroad.
SIGNAL MOUNTAIN RAILWAY (NORTHSIDE), 1891
This railway began as two separate railways in 1891, the
Chattanooga & Northside Railway, serving Hill City and Vallambrosa, and North
Chattanooga Street Car Railway, serving North Chattanooga, Chattanooga Golf and
County Club, and Riverview, later adding Normal Park. The two separate
companies were owned by the same group of people.
In 1896, the two railways were brought together as the
Signal Mountain Railway (Northside), though neither the Vallambrosa Line nor
the Riverview Line (named after their termini line) went anywhere near Signal
Mountain.
Rapid Transit of Chattanooga purchased Signal Mountain
Railway in 1900, reorganizing it as Northside Consolidated Railway and discontinuing
the private right-of-way extension to Vallambrosa from the Peak Street depot on
Upper Ferry Road (North Market Street).
Chattanooga
Railways Company purchased Rapid Transit in 1906 and integrated these two lines
into its system.
The
community here began with Camp Contraband during the Civil War, home to freed
slaves. In time, the settlement grew into Hill City. After the
North Chattanooga Land Company entered the development scene, residents began
to debate changing the name. Another company called Northside Land
Company owned the the section south of Colville Street between Tucker Street
and Beak Avenue. After the township of North Chattanooga incorporated in
1915, Northside disappeared as a separate entity. The western boundary of
the township was Forest Avenue, with the unincorporated section to the west
still known as Hill City, until its residents voted in favor of annexation by
North Chattanooga in 1925.
Vallambrosa Line
Originally Chattanooga & Northside Railway
Lewis Station
This
stop was approximately halfway between the north end of the County Bridge and
Hill City Station.
Hill City
This
station and the car shed stood on the fifth lot north of the intersection of West
Peak Street and Upper Ferry Road (now North Market Street), on the west side of
the latter. Vallambrosa included the
area west of Stringer’s Ridge north of what is now Williams Street along
The post
office of Harveyton was established here as in 1883, changing to Hill City in
1884 and operating until 1912 when it was discontinued and service moved to
North Chattanooga, according to USPS records.
Vallambrosa
This
station stood on the crest of Stringer’s Ridge directly over the modern
tunnel, a little bit east of where the County Road went over the ridge.
After leaving the Peak Street station, the trolley travelled to the north
limit of Upper Ferry Road/North Market Street, then curved southwest to the
beginning of a extended horseshoe curve to get it to the top of the ridge.
After 1900, Rapid Transit discontinued service to this station. The
community of Vallambrosa included the area west of Stringer’s Ridge and
north of what is now Spring Street between Whitehall Road and Ladd Avenue,
including at area at the northern mouth of the tunnel through the ridge where
Cherokee Motel is and where the Outlaws MC once had their clubhouse.
During the
Civil War, Fort Wilder near here served the later Chattanooga’s leader’s
brigade as an artillery emplacement from which to shell the town during the
Second Battle of Chattanooga 21 August-7 September 1863. During the Federal Military Occupation, it
anchored the center of the line of blockhouses from Fort Whitaker at the
southern end of Stringer’s Ridge on Moccasin Point to the redoubt in North
Chattanooga proper.
Riverview Line
Originally North Chattanooga Street Car Railway
North Chattanooga
This
station stood on Tremont Avenue at the top of the hill.
During the
Federal Military Occupation, a redoubt anchored the eastern end of the line of
blockhouses mentioned above, located in what’s now Valentine Circle.
A post
office of North Chattanooga existed at some time, according to the previously
mentioned USPS records and a few other notations in various sources, but no
other information is available. However, since the Hill City post office
transferred in 1912, it had to have been operating at that time, and may have
continued to do so until the town was annexed to Chattanooga in 1930.
Normal Park
From 1896
to 1907, North Chattanooga hosted the Chattanooga Normal University. A
“normal” school or university in the late 19th-early 20th centuries trained
teachers. After it opened, the railway added a station for its
instructors and students. The area east of Beck Avenue and south of
Tremont Street developed into Normal Park. In 1907, Hamilton County took
over the university here, turned it into a grammar school, Normal Park
Elementary, and transferred the teacher training department to the new
University of Chattanooga.
Beck’s Station
This
stop was located in the vicinity of Beck Cemetery on Riverview Road (as opposed
to the Beck Cemetery on Darmouth Street).
Riverview
This station
stood on the east side of Sevier Street directly across from what was then the
east end of Temple Street. On a modern
map, this is the outside of the curve in Riverview Road past Lexington Street
(the path leading to the clubhouse at its later and current location.
Chattanooga Golf and Country Club
The
terminus of the line was directly in front of the clubhouse here, which then
was directly on Sevier Street at what now 1635 Riverview Road.
CHICKAMAUGA & DURHAM
RAILROAD, 1892
Originally
chartered in 1889 as the Chattanooga & Gulf Railroad, the Chickamauga & Durham Railroad (C&D) had the mission of bringing coal from the Durham
Mines atop Lookout Mountain to be turned into coke in the Chickamauga Ovens in
Chickamauga, Georgia. Until 1936, it
also provided passenger service. It
began operating in 1892 with two locomotives.
The owner of the railroad, James English, also owned the Durham Coal and
Coke Company. After a foreclosure in
1894 year, it reorganized as the Chattanooga & Durham Railroad. It was sold to the Chattanooga, Rome, & Southern Railroad (CR&S) in 1900, and CR&S was in turn bought the next
year by Central of Georgia Railroad (COG), which operated this line until 1951.
English
built his railroad and operated his mines with convict slave labor under the
same system in Georgia which Tennessee used.
Although
not a Chattanooga railroad strictly speaking, it was first chartered with
Chattanooga in its name and operated for six years with the city’s name as part
of its title. Its later connections to
both CR&S and COG gave it direct connections to the city also.
The
stations on the Chickamauga & Durham Railroad and its successors were as
follows.
Chickamauga
The
headquarters for the railroad. It was
also the junction with the CR&C and its successors.
For more
information, see the entry for this station in the section on the Chattanooga,
Rome, & Columbus Railroad (CR&C), the predecessor of the CR&S.
Wallaceville
This
station two-and-a-third miles out stood in a community that has been
incorporated into the city of Chickamauga.
The post
office of Wallaceville operated from 1892 to 1904.
Harps Switch
This
station three miles out from Chickamauga primarily serviced a side-track
here. It most likely would have been at
the Harp Switch Road crossing of the railway, but since the tracks have been
taken up is now impossible to locate more accurately.
Durham Junction
This
station stood at the junction of this railroad with the CS, in the later
community of Cenchat.
For more
information the entry for Cenchat under the Chattanooga Southern Railway.
Eagle Cliff
Although
this station bore the same name as a station on the CS line, this one a little
over four miles from Durham Junction probably stood at the base of the actual
cliff. Also known as Wests Station.
Lula Lake
A notable
attraction of Lookout Mountain and once the intended terminus of the Lookout
Incline & Lula Lake Railway. Clearly
this railroad carried passengers who were tourists and pleasure seekers as well
as employees of the mines.
Massey’s Station
This
station stood two miles south of Lula Lake in what is now the Hinkles
community.
The post
office of Hinkles operated here from 1914 until 1930.
Gary’s Camp
This
station a little over a mile further south could have either been a work camp
or a resort; today it is the community of Vulcan.
Ascalon
This
station stood two-thirds of the way between Gary's Camp and Durham.
The post
office of Ascalon operated from 1881 to 1919.
Durham
This
station was the end-of-the-road at the Durham Coal Mines and its company town,
which was actually called Pittsburg.
According to John Wilson, besides the mines and homes for employees, it
had a commissary, a school, a ball field, and a post office. None of that exists now, and the land belongs
to the Lula Lake Land Trust.
The post
office of Pittsburg operated here from 1900 until 1946.
SEQUATCHIE VALLEY
BRANCH RAILROAD, 1894
In the
records of the legal history of the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis
Railway (NC&StL), its Sequatchie Valley Branch (SVB) Railroad was composed
of three separate lines of differing origins, which NC&StL formed into a
single railroad. The three branch
railroads are the Jasper Branch Railroad (Bridgeport to Jasper), completed
1867; the Inman Branch Railroad (Inman to Victoria), completed 1883; and the
Pikeville Branch Railroad (Jasper to Pikeville), completed 1894.
The
Sequatchie Valley Branch Railroad (SVB) began life as the Jasper Branch
Railroad of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, originally authorized in
1860 but interrupted by the Civil War.
Work was completed to Jasper in 1867.
In 1868,
the Sequatchie Valley Railroad Company began an effort to extend the railway
from Jaser to Pikeville. The tracks were
laid as far as Victoria in 1877 when the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis
Railroad (NC&StL) purchased it, completing the line into Pikeville in 1894.
The Inman
Branch Railroad was completed in late 1882 by the Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Railway Company from its Inman Mines to a junction with what was then still
called the Jasper Branch Railroad at Victoria.
The NC&StL took ownership of the line 1 January 1883.
By 1894,
the railway from Bridgeport to Pikeville was in full operation (according to
the records of the NC&StL), headquartered in Jasper. In 1917, the Louisville & Nashville
Railroad (L&N), parent of the NC&StL, consolidated operations of the
NC&StL with the SVB at a new depot in Bridgeport. By 1921, the SVB was offering service all the
way into Chattanooga over the lines of its parent, the NC&StL, the junction
with these being at Bridgeport, Alabama.
In 1877,
the NC&StL purchased the McMinnville & Manchester Railroad from the
Memphis & Charleston Railroad (M&C), and after extending its track to
Sparta, Tennessee, renamed it the Sparta Branch Railroad. The NC&StL planned to extend to this line
south and junction with the SVB at Pikeville, giving it a railway from
Tullahoma, Tennessee, to Bridgeport, Alabama, but this never came about, though
the survey was complete. The furthest
south the tracks of the Sparta Branch reached were Ravenscroft in Cumberland
County, still twenty-six-and-a-half miles out.
During the
Siege of Chattanooga in the Civil War, the entire length of the Sequatchie
Valley saw fighting during Wheeler’s Raid on Union supply lines 1-9 October
1863, the most spectacular action in the valley being at Anderson’s Cross
Roads, where his troops captured 800 supply wagons and nearly 600 troops .
Rather than
in order completed, its station are presented here in order of progression from
the SVB’s northern terminus. While a few
of these had mere waiting sheds to service passengers and platforms for
freight, the majority had depots, some surprisingly large.
The
stations on the SVB were as follows.
Pikeville
This town
was the terminus of the SVB. The depot at
this schedule stop was probably located near the intersection of West Railroad
Avenue with East Railroad Avenue.
Founded in
1816, Pikeville incorporated in 1830. In
1818, it became the second seat of Bledsoe County after it was moved here from Madison
(now Mount Airy in Sequatchie County).
The post
office of Pikeville was established in 1811, according to the archives of the
Tennessee Secretary of State.
Lees Station
The next
station down the line is another schedule stop.
This community never had a post office and has never been incorporated
but had a huge depot for both passengers and freight, which was probably at or
near the Kelly Road (Lane) crossing, with the community now centered on the Kelly Lane
intersection with Old Tennessee Highway 28.
College Station
The schedule
stop at this last station in Bledsoe County was originally intended to service Sequatchie
College, founded in 1865, but that closed in 1887. The institution was somewhat unique at the
time for being coeducational. A fairly
decent-sized community had grown up in the vicinity. The depot was probably at the crossing of
College Station Mountain Road.
The post
office of Sequachee College operated from 1882 until 1907.
Pailo
The station
of this schedule stop was near the intersection of Old Tennessee Highway 28
with Howard Beaver Road.
The post
office of Pailo operated from 1886 until 1907.
Mount Airy
The first
community down the line in Sequatchie County was at this schedule stop in
Bledsoe County until the former was created.
Under its original identity as Madison, it was the first seat of the
latter county. The depot most likely would
have been near where Mount Airy Road meets Old York Highway.
The post
office of Mount Airy was established in Bledsoe County in 1825 and operated in
Sequatchie County after its creation until 1894.
Dunlap
The depot at
this schedule stop operated from 1888 until 1972 on Railroad Street. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N)
ceased operations and closed the depot in 1972, and it burned two years later.
This town
is the seat of Sequatchie County. In
fact, it was created for that purpose in the area previously known as Coops
Creek in 1858. It incorporated as the
“Taxing District of Dunlap” in 1901, as the “Town of Dunlap” in 1927, and as
the “City of Dunlap” in 1941.
The
railroad arrived here in 1888, but it wasn’t until 1900 that the Douglas Coal
and Coke Company began operations. To
convert mined coal into coke, Douglas built 268 ovens atop nearby Fredonia
Mountain and an incline railway to haul the coal up and the coke down. In 1904, Douglas went bankrupt, and was
purchased by the Chattanooga Coal and Iron Company, which continued the
operations until 1927. The coke ovens
now belong to the Sequatchie Valley Historical Association as the Dunlap Coke
Ovens Park.
The post
office was established in Marion County (before the creation of Sequatchie
County) as Coops Creek in 1837, changing to Dunlap in Sequatchie County in
1866.
Daus
The route
of US Highway 27 runs directly through the former roadbed here, and the depot
that once stood at the schedule stop in this community was probably at west
side the intersection of the highway with Stone Cave Road.
The
community here was originally named Delphi by one of its prominent
families. When the railroad came and
Witco Mining began operations, a member of another family gave land for a depot
on the condition it not be named Delphi.
Thus it became Daus, and for a while there was a good deal of confusion
with shipments being made to and from Daus Station but bills and other
correspondence going through the Delphi Post Office.
The post
office here was created as Delphi in Marion County in 1822, changed to
Sequachee in 1850, and discontinued in 1850.
Meanwhile, another post office nearby called Daus was created in 1827
that moved to Sequatchie County along with the community; it operated until
1873. Postal service revived under the
name Delphi in 1878 and operated until 1921.
A post office named Daus reappeared in 1927, operating until 1973.
Cartwright
The primary
reason for existence of this signal stop, which stood at the crossing of
Cartwright Loop, was the Palmetto Coal Company Mines, which shut down during
the Great Depression.
Condra Switch
This signal
stop at the crossing of Condra Switch Road was the first stop after crossing
into Marion County, and its purpose was mainly to service the side-track here.
The post
office of Cedar Springs was established near here by a member of the local
Condra family in 1874, moving to Whitwell in 1929.
Shirleyton
This schedule
stop stood at a westward curve of the tracks that brought it close to Old
Dunlap Road, near the intersection of Blacksmith Road.
The post
office of Shirleton operated from 1883 until 1904, when it moved to Cedar
Springs.
Whitwell
The railroad
reached this schedule stop in 1887.
Until 1878, the community here was named Cheeksville; the name changed
in honor of Thomas Whitwell, the cofounder of Southern States Coal, Iron, and
Land Company killed in a mine explosion that year. Coal was so big here that the town gained the
nickname “Coal City of the Sequatchie Valley”.
Its major employer was Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company
until 1882, then Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company.
The post
office of Cheeksville was established here in 1830, changing to Whitwell in
1887.
Victoria
For ten
years, from 1877 until 1887, this community first known as Dadsville was the
northern terminus of the SVB. The depot
here still exists on Victoria Commerce Center Road, being used today as a
private residence. It is one of two
depots from the Sequatchie Valley Branch Railroad days still in existence.
Along with
Whitwell, Victoria was one of the two centers for coal mining and coke
production by the British-owned Southern States Coal, Iron, and Land Company.
The post
office of Dadsville was established here as in 1850, changing to Victoria in
1877 in honor of the British monarch. It
was moved to Whitwell in 1974.
The next
two stations are on the line of the Inman Branch Railroad.
*Hutton
Briefly a
schedule stop, this tiny station four miles from Victoria and five miles from
Inman has left no trace it ever existed. However, a map from the period
places it immediately east of Sequatchie River due north of Inman, roughly
parallel with the modern community of Oak Grove on East Valley Road (Griffith
Highway).
*Inman
This
station was in the vicinity of the intersection of Inman Road with East Valley
Road (Griffith Highway) on the east bank of the Sequatchie River, at the end of
the spur line from Victoria.
The Inman
Mines were at first run by the Southern States Coal, Iron, & Land Company,
until it was bought out by Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Railroad Company. The latter used mostly prison slave labor in
its mines, sixty percent of all prison inmates in the state, in fact. The mining camp here was a prison stockade
and conditions were deplorable.
Situations like this, and the fact that using prison slaves took jobs
away from free colliers (coal miners) led to the Coal Creek War that began in
Anderson County in 1891. That rarely
heard-of conflict lasted nearly two years and resulted in the use of prison
slave labor being ended in the State of Tennessee.
The post
office of Gholston was established at the Inman Mines in 1882, changing to its
name Inman in 1884. It was discontinued
and postal service moved to Whitwell in 1929.
From here
we return to the main line.
Sequatchie
This
unincorporated town lies at the mouth of Waterfall Cove at the foot of
Sequatchie Mountain on Valley View Highway.
Unlike many of the whistlestops in Sequatchie Valley, it has continued
to thrive, if somewhat less than in earlier days. The depot at this schedule stop was probably
located at either the Harding Street crossing or the Lassiter Road crossing, more
likely the former.
The post
office of Sequatchie was established in 1890 and still operates, its station
standing right in the middle of “town”.
Jasper
Jasper
depot was the original terminus of the Jasper Branch Railroad, which began
service in 1867. This schedule stop was
headquarters for the SVB until 1917. The
town was established in 1819 on land leased from Cherokee Beloved Woman (the
literal translation of the Cherokee for a female “chief”) Betsy Pack, daughter
of Cherokee leader John Lowery. Since
its inception, the town has been the seat of Marion County. Until 1917, the headquarters of the
Sequatchie Valley Branch Railroad were located here.
During the
Civil War, there was an engagement here on 24 June 1863.
The town’s
railway depot, built in 1923 by the L&N, parent of the NC&StL, serves
today as the Jasper city hall. It is the
other depot from the days of this railroad still in existence.
The post
office of Jasper was established in 1819.
Browder Switch
This depot at
this signal stop stood at the Browder Switch Road crossing.
Kimball
The depot
here stood north of the tracks at the end of what is now Kimball Lane.
This town nestled between its two much larger
neighbors was founded as what was planned to be an industrial city, much the
same as in the dreams of the founders of New England City in Dade County,
Georgia. It had earlier been the site of
the mining town of Wallview, owned by the company which operated the Wallview
Mines. The industrial town enterprise
never really got off the ground due to the explosive of Suth Pittsburg.
On what
were once the outskirts of town, the two most important highways of the early
20th century, the north-south Dixie Highway and the east-west Robert E. Lee
Highway cross paths, giving the name Dixie-Lee Junction to the area, though
outside Kimball it is usually called simply Dixie Lee because of the same-named
community in Loudon County. The actual
“junction” was where the old Stuckey’s restaurant used to be; it’s now a
Krystal
The post
office of Ino was established here in 1887, changing to Wallview later that
year. It became Kimball in 1890 and
operated until 1914, when service moved to Jasper, moving again to South
Pittsburg in 1918.
South Pittsburg
The depot at
this schedule stop and coupon station stood along Railroad Avenue on the same
block as the last location of United States Stove Company.
The
Southern States Coal, Iron, & Land Company chose this community to be the
major center for its iron production in the region, using ore produced by the
nearby Battle Creek Mines. As mentioned
above, that company was purchased by Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company
in 1882. The economy of the town mushroomed,
and the city ballooned, becoming the industrial center Kimball’s backers had
dreamed of it becoming.
During the
Civil War, the Battle of Fort McCook took place here along the riverside 27-28 August 1862. There had been another engagement here 21 June
1862.
A post
office called Battle Creek was established in the vicinity in 1831, operating
until it was discontinued in 1858. The
post office was reestablished as Battle Creek Mines in 1869, the name changing to
South Pittsburg in 1876.
Richard City
This schedule
stop on the stateline originated as a company town for and was built by Dixie
Portland Company, to house the employees of its large cement plant here. In 1926, Dixie Portland merged with several
other cement producers as Pennsylvania-Dixie Cement Corporation, or Penn-Dixie.
A spur line
operated briefly from here to the Rexton Mines for about two years.
The post
office was established as Copenhagen in 1879.
It changed to Deptford in 1890, and back again to Copenhagen in 1893
until changing to Richard City in 1918.
Bridgeport
The SVB
maintained a depot here separate from its parent companies the L&N and the
NC&StL until 1917, when the L&N consolidated the depots and brought the
offices of the SVB south from their original home in Jasper, Tennessee. The SVB depot here was also a coupon station.
For more
information on Bridgeport, see the section on the Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad.
Chattanooga
When the
SVB began running trips into Chattanooga, it used Union Depot as its terminal here.
SOUTHERN RAILWAY, 1894
In 1894,
this railroad came into existence through the merger of East Tennessee, Virginia,
& Georgia Railway, Memphis & Charleston Railroad, Richmond & Danville
Railroad, and Richmond, York River, & Chesapeake Railroad. In time, it acquired controlling interest in
Alabama Great Southern Railway, Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific
Railway, Central of Georgia Railway, and Georgia Southern & Florida Railway.
Ultimately, the railroad became Norfolk-Southern
Railway in 1982.
ORME BRANCH RAILROAD,
1904
The Orme
Branch Railroad (OB) was built by the Campbell Coke and Coal Company in 1904 as
the Doran’s Cove Branch Railroad (DCB), primarily to send its coal and coke
from its mines at Orme, opened in 1902, to market along a more efficient route
than the mountain roads it had been using.
The Battle Creek Coal and Coke Company bought the operation in 1905, and
the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway changed the name of the
railway.
The OB switched
off the Sequatchie Valley Branch Railroad (SVB) about a mile out from
Bridgeport. Like the SVB, the DCB, as the
OB, began offering trips all the way into Chattanooga in the early 20th
century.
The
stations on the Orme Branch Railroad and its successor were as follows.
Orme
The town of
Orme, which is still incorporated with about 150 citizens, came into being as company
town for the Campbell Coal and Coke Company.
It lies in upper Doran’s Cove along the end of Orme Road. The town center and its depot, which still
stands, though the tracks were removed decades ago, are at the junction of Old
Shop Hollow and Payne Cove. The town is
only easily accessible by going through Alabama; you also can get there from
the top of the plateau by way of Orme Mountain Road if you are up for an
adventure.
The post
office of Needmore was established in 1902, changing later that year to Orme,
as which it operated until 1965, when service moved to South Pittsburg.
Crownover
This
station stood next to Crownover Spring east of the intersection of Orme Road,
Cluck Cove Road (Jackson County Road 298), and Doran’s Cove Road (County Road
98).
Montague
A little
over four miles later (according to the Official
Railway Guide) came this station on the west side of the tracks across from
the end of Needmore Road. It mainly
served the Needmore Coal Mines and its company town, also named Needmore, atop
Montague Mountain.
Mount Carmel
This
station stood at what’s now the intersection of Old Stevenson-Bridgeport Road
(County Road 75).
Cumberland Junction
This
station a half mile down stood near the intersection of Rocky Springs Road
(County Road 74) and County Road 572, reached by a spur that switched off the
main line to the south.
Johnson’s Crossing
This
station was a little over a mile-and-a-half down the line.
Orme Junction
Another two
miles down the line came the junction with the SVB, a mile out from that
railway’s Bridgeport Depot.
Bridgeport
The Doran’s
Cove/Orme Branch Railroad used SVB’s depot here.
For more
Bridgeport information, see the sections on the Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad and on the Sequatchie Valley Branch Railroad.
Chattanooga
After the OB
began offering trips all the way into Chattanooga, it used the NC&StL’s Union
Depot as its terminal here.
For more
information, see this entry under the section on the Nashvile and Chattanooga
Railroad.
CHATTANOOGA TRACTION COMPANY,
1913
While this
was strictly an electric railway operation, I’m including it because of its
connection with the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway (CNO&TP)
and because it reached areas not included in any of the steam or diesel
railways. In addition to being the last
major electric railway lines built in Chattanooga, they were also the last railway
lines built by C.E. James. The main
purpose for building the first line was to carry passengers to another venture
of his, the Signal Mountain Inn.
“Traction” in the title of the company refers to the kind of engine using
electric power for propulsion.
The
Chattanooga Traction Company (CTC) built three lines north of the river, the
Signal Mountain Division, which opened in 1913; the Dry Valley (or Red Bank) Division,
which opened in 1916; and the Hixson Division, which was sold to Cincinnati,
New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railway in 1917 before it opened.
In building
this last line, CTC had intended to load freight at CNO&TP’s Tenbridge
Station to carry on its lines to haul into Chattanooga but discovered it would
come under scrutiny of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and sold the line to
CNO&TP.
Unified Line
North Chattanooga
This
station stood at the north end of the County Bridge (now Walnut Street Bridge)
until John Ross Bridge opened, when it moved to a spot just west of that
bridge.
Signal Mills
This
station stood at the former Signal Knitting Mill on Manufacturers Roads now
serving as the home for Food Works.
Magnolia
Roughly halfway
between the stations in either side, this station may have served the needs of
the Magnolia Petroleum Company, which had a presence here in the early 20th
century.
Divine
This
station stood where Power Corporation Drive runs under US 27. The brick depot here is one of the very few
(possibly the only) surviving such structures from the CTC days. The railway’s car barns sat nearby to the
east.
Tennessee Paper Mills
This
station stood at the eponymous factory on Manufacturers Road.
Riverside
This
station was at Riverside Road and Manufacturers Road, and a spur line from here
ran south down to Moccasin Point, not quite reaching the end.
Valley Junction
This depot
was at the intersection of Pineville Road and West Elmwood Drive and was the
junction from which Signal Mountain and Dry Valley Divisions went their
separate ways.
Signal Mountain Division
Passenger
service on this line operated from September 1913 until 4 July 1934.
Pineville
This
station stood at the Pineville Road crossing.
Williams Island
This
station stood approximately at the Baylor School Road crossing, and there was a
spur line from here onto the school’s campus.
Silver Creek
This
station stood at the Old Signal Mountain Road crossing.
Crystal City
This
station was about where the northern entrance to the Wal-Mart complex in Signal
Mountain Boulevard is now. From the
station there was a road that circled Crystal Lake, a feature which long ceased
to exist long before Wal-Mart came.
Jones Station
This
station stood behind Food City on Signal Mountain Boulevard.
Glendale
This
station stood at the intersection of Glendale Drive with Signal Mountain
Boulevard.
Elks
This
station stood just below the first sharp curve to the east on Signal Mountain Boulevard.
Sub Station
This
station stood below Williams Point, roughly at the intersection of Sunset Drive
with Signal Mountain Boulevard.
Shoal Creek
This
station stood approximately at the intersection of Shoal Creek Road with Signal
Mountain Boulevard, below Brady Point.
Wilder
This
station stood near where North Palisades Drive crosses Shoal Creek.
Adams
This
station stood at the intersection of Adams Street with Palisades Drive.
Oakwood
This
station stood near the intersection of Ladder Trail with Palisades Drive.
Hollywood
This
station stood near the intersection of Wood Street with Mississippi Avenue.
Fairview
This
station stood at the intersection of Fairview Avenue with Mississippi Avenue.
Tennessee Avenue
This
station stood at the intersection of Tennessee Avenue with Mississippi Avenue.
Exchange
This
station stood approximately at the intersection of Mississippi Avenue, James
Boulevard, and Brady Point Road.
Signal Mountain Inn
The Signal
Mountain Inn, the terminus of the Signal Mountain Line, is now the Alexian
Brothers of Tennessee Retirement Community.
Since there
is no “Signal Mountain Station”, I will add the postal information here. The post office of Signal Mountain was
established in 1915 and continues to this day.
Dry Valley Division
Passenger
service on this line operated from March 1917 until 31 March 1928.
Woodland
This
station stood at the McRoy Road crossing.
Hillside
This
station stood at the Signal Mountain Boulevard crossing.
Valdeau
This station
stood at the Dayton Boulevard crossing.
The post
office of Valdeau operated from 1897 until 1915, when service was moved to
Chattanooga.
Midvale
This
station stood at the Midvale Avenue East crossing.
White Oak
This
station stood at the Memorial Drive (formerly Whiteoak Road) crossing.
Walters
This
station was at the east end of Signal View Street, which once went to the
tracks.
Flora
This
station was at the Culver Street crossing.
C & D Junction
This
station stood at the junction of the Red Bank Division with the Hixson Division,
at what’s now the intersection of Harding Road and Dayton Boulevard.
Morrison
This
station stood at what’s now the insection of Newberry Street East with Dayton
Boulevard.
Ford
This
station stood at what’s now the intersection of Euclid Avenue with Dayton
Boulevard.
Red Bank
This
station stood at what’s now the intersection of East Leawood Avenue with Dayton
Boulevard.
The post
office of Red Bank operated from 1875 until 1902, when it was moved to Valdeau.
Hixson Division
This line
was completed in 1917 and sold to CNO&TP before CTC ever operated on it.
C&D Junction
This
station was at the junction of the two railways. See the entry under the Red Bank Division.
Lupton City
The
passenger depot, if there was one, probably stood at the end of Mill Street,
near where it meets the tracks.
The post
office of Lupton City operated from 1925 until 2009.
Tenbridge
This
station was the junction of this line with CNO&TP’s main line into
Chattanooga.
For more
information, see the entry in the section on the Cincinnati Southern Railway.
