Notes from the Ninth Circle: South Hamilton Co. TN communities and placenames

(Note: Most recently updated 27 November 2021)

These are the historic communities, those completely past and those still extant, of Hamilton County, Tennessee, south of the Tennessee River to the Georgia stateline and west of Missionary Ridge to the Marion County line, all of which are now part of the City of Chattanooga.

Included are post offices, local and long range rail stations, schools, and the oldest church, mostly but not entirely taken from the Works Progress Administration’s Guide to Church Vital Statistics in Tennessee published in 1942.

In the last two cases (schools and churches), the information comes from the time when schools and churches were racially segregated, and if both were/are present in a community, both are noted. I’ve also included the more prominent geological features and waterways.

For about a year and a half, including all of 1890, three local railroads served the City of Chattanooga at the same time: Chattanooga Street Railroad (1875-1891), Union Railway (1885-1893), and Chattanooga Electric Railway (1889-1947). The first was mule-drawn, the second steam-powered (Forney locomotives), and the third, electric-powered. Later, these three were combined into a single electric trolley company.

For the Union Railway, I’ve included the stations, if any, and the division; for Chattanooga Electric Railway (which absorbed Chattanooga Street Railroad, along with others), I’ve noted the line or division, if any, using the divisions it served in its heyday.

Academy Hill was the southeast spur of Cameron Hill named for the Masonic Academy that met on the top floor of the order’s hall that stood upon it. During the War of the Rebellion, the academy served both sides as a hospital.

After the war, the academy served as the first location of the city’s (not the county’s) Central High School from 1874 until it moved into a building with First District School at the corner of McCallie and Douglas in 1880. The Second District School then began meeting in the vacant space. After the lodge moved to a new building downtown at Cherry and 7th, Second District moved into the lower two floors and the city’s Central High returned to its former home.

The two separate schools shared the building until 1896, when it burned to the ground. The new Second District School was built on the spot while the city’s Central High moved to a building on Gilmer (East 8th) Street.

Alton Park lies south of West 37th Street, east of Alton Park Boulevard, and north of West 47th Street, and is bordered on the west by Forest Hills Cemetery and Hawkins Ridge. It began life as Oak Hills for workers on the Union Railway, and became Alton Park when Chattanooga Southern (Tennessee-Alabama-Georgia) Railway took over the railyards, maintenance facilities, and depot in 1895. The population of Alton Park in 1900 was 450.

The City of Alton Park incorporated in 1913. Its boundaries were, roughly, the Town of St. Elmo, Chattanooga Creek, East 37th Street, and East 47th Street. The city reincorporated in 1917, extending its southern boundary all the way south to the Tennessee-Georgia stateline.

The post office of Mayston, originally intended to be named Alton, operated in what was still called Oak Hill 1891-1893. The post office of Alton Park operated 1895-1920.

Alton Park Station served the Mountain Division of the Union Railway, originally as Oak Hill Station, then Chattanooga Southern (Tennessee-Alabama-Georgia) Railway.

The 608-unit Spencer McCallie Homes were built here in 1953, largely to house Afro-Americans displaced from Blue Goose Hollow, Tannery Flats, and College Hill (Westside) by the Golden Gateway project. The remaining 416 units were demolished in 2003-2005 to make way for high-end townhomes.

Alton Park School opened in the 1910s. It became Frank H. Trotter Elementary School in the 1950s and closed in the early 1970s.

After annexation, the city moved the former St. Elmo School (Colored) here and opened it in the fall of 1930 as Calvin Donaldson School; by 1940, it had become Calvin Donaldson Elementary and Junior High School. By the 1960s, it was back to Calvin Donaldson Elementary again and remains so in the third decade of the 21st century.

The city opened Charles A. Bell Elementary School here in the 1950s, primarily to serve children in the Spencer McCallie Homes. It fell victim to the mass school closings in 1989.

In the mid-1960s, the city opened Alton Park Junior High School. After the unification of the Hamilton County and Chattanooga City Schools, it became Alton Park Middle, then in 1997 John P. Franklin Middle School after the longtime city Commissioner of Education. Franklin Middle closed in 2005.

The oldest church here was Alton Park Methodist Episcopal Church, which started life as Sarah M. James Memorial Episcopal Church in 1894. In 1954, it merged with Woodmore Methodist Episcopal. The oldest black church was St. Peter’s Mission, African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded 1924.

Alton Park was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Amnicola was the large farm of first the Crutchfields and later the Montagues along the Tennessee River, south of South Chickamauga Creek and west of the railroads. It was also used as an alternate name for Curtain Pole community.

The post office of Amnicola was actually in Boyce, operated 1879-1887, and the Western & Atlantic Railroad altered the name of its station to conform, but Cincinnati Southern Railway and its successor Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway did not, even though both railroads used the same depot.

See also Piney Woods.

Blue Goose Hollow was north of where West 6th Street (now West MLK Boulevard, earlier Mill Street) came over Cameron Hill. It began as company housing for workers at Roane Iron Works until it closed in 1890 and is famous for being the birthplace of the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith. Fulton Street is all that remains. By the turn of the century, all (or nearly all) the inhabitants were Afro-American.

The oldest church here was Grace Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, founded 1898 and meeting in the building that was once a mission of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church during the heyday of Roane Iron called St. John’s Chapel. The congregation that formed Pleasant Grove (later Second Baptist) Church met in a home on Hill Street here after leaving Wauhatchie in the 1870s before building their facility on Leonard (West 10th) and Elm Streets.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1851.

Bluff View was once the premier place for the wealthy to live in downtown Chattanooga. Along the bluff overlooking the Tennessee River at the end of High Street, it survives as Hunter Art Museum, Houston Museum, and Mary Portero’s Bluff View Arts District, which preserves the great majority of the former homes. The upper ends of Cherry, Walnut, Lookout, and High Streets and Georgia Avenue were also once affluent residential areas.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1851.

Boulevard Park (see Black Bottom).

Boyce was a municipality east of the Western & Atlantic Railroad and west of Chamberlain Avenue between Bachman and Sims Streets, most likely organized for the purpose of supporting a school. Its name derived from Boyce Station on the Western & Atlantic Railroad later shared with the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway. When the community’s post office was renamed Amnicola, W&A changed the name of its station while CNO&TP kept the name Boyce, even though the two railways shared a single depot building.

Boyce Station was also the terminal station of the Orchard Knob Division of the Union Railway, originally using the same depot building.

The heirs of Samuel J. Boyce (died 1877) had planned for a Boyce Addition from Cushman Street to Sims Street between the railroad tracks to the west and Chamberlain Avenue on the east. The section south of Elmendorf Street east to Dodson Avenue became known as the “Original Town of Boyce” while the section to the north extending east to Noah Street became Sherman Park Addition. The population of Boyce (under the name East Chattanooga) in 1900 was 636.

The post office of Boyce Junction operated briefly in 1879 before changing to Amnicola a month later, to Boyce six months later, back to Amnicola three weeks later and lasting for eight years, back to Boyce for a year-and-a-half, then finally to East Chattanooga in 1889. However, though the community adopted that name, however, W&A kept the name Boyce for its rail station as had CNO&TP. The local East Chattanooga P.O. closed in 1905, with service transferred to the East Chattanooga Station of the Chattanooga P.O. located on the northeast corner of the intersection of North Chamberlain Avenue and Glass Street in the neighboring suburb of Sherman Heights.

Boyce School existed in the late 1800s at the southwest corner of the intersection of Wilder Street and North Chamberlain Avenue.

The earliest church in Boyce was East Chattanooga Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1888. That and the hotel Sherman House (whose building survives with the name Boyce Boarding House) were the center of Boyce/East Chattanooga community.

Boyce became part of the Town of East Chattanooga in 1917, and was annexed into the City of Chattanooga along with the rest of the former town in 1925.

For more information, see the entry for East Chattanooga; see also Old Boyce.

Boynton Hill (see Terrace Hill)

Bozentown lies north of Appling Street between Riverside Drive and Belmont Avenue to the section of Wood Avenue that intersects with Riverside Drive.

Roland Hays School opened adjacent to Bozentown on the corner of Crutchfield Street and Riverside Drive in the fall of 1928; its name was originally intended to be Bozentown School. The City of Chattanooga closed it after annexation of the area in 1968, but they also closed predominantly white Amnicola School at the same time.

Joseph Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church opened its doors in 1921 at Wood and McChesney Avenues, and is still there. The First Baptist Church of Bozentown, which now makes its home in the former Ridgedale Methodist Church on Dodds Avenue where my grandmother attended church, was established on Wood Avenue in 1931.

Bozentown was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1968.

Brabson Hill, as a geographic designation, refers to both Chattanooga’s western hill from Market Street eastward to the railyards beyond Central Avenue and to the knob upon which the former Brabson House stands. Brabson Hill was also the popular name for most of the old East Side west of the ETV&G to Georgia Avenue, especially for the more posh western end. Much of it has fallen to expansion from either side by Unum (Provident) and UTC. As the neighborhood, the term includes both sides of McCallie Avenue within those bounds, extending to East 8th (Gilmer) Street west of the center line of Mabel (C) Street.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and Federal Military Occupation, Fort Sherman, a single bowed line of earthworks, stretched from East 5th Street to East 3rd Street, with Brabson House at its center. The line contain a number of enhancements usually listed as separate fortifications.

Battery Bushnell anchored Fort Sherman’s east end at East 4th Street and Lindsay Streets.

Redoubt Putnam anchored Fort Sherman’s west end at East 5th Street and Walnut Streets.

Lunette O’Meara reinforced the center of Fort Sherman at East 5th Street and Lindsay Street.

One of three fortifications of Battery Erwin occupied a line just west of Houston Street between Vine Street and McCallie Avenue.

Highland Park Division of Chattanooga Electric Railway ran through Brabson Hill.

First Ward School (later First District, and finally Clara Carpenter) was the public school for the neighborhood, first on Georgia Avenue (1873), then at McCallie Avenue and D (Douglas) Street (1880), and finally farther up Douglas to East 5th Street (mid-1920s). At desegregation in the 1960s, Clara Carpenter Elementary School was consolidated with East Fifth Street Elementary School at the first’s location but under the second’s name. It closed in the early 1980s.

From 1880 through 1891, the building in which First District met also hosted Chattanooga High School on its top floor. The school returned to the neighborhood in 1897, this time at 111 Gilmer (East 8th) Street, after its temporary home in the Old Academy burned down in 1896. In 1905, CHS took up new quarters in the Dickinson Building at 413 Gilmer (East 8th) Street between C (Mabel) and B (Houston) Streets. At the start of the 1921-1922 school year, the school now named Chattanooga High School (City) moved into Wyatt Hall, where it remained until the spring of 1963.

The year after Chattanooga High vacated its building on East 8th Street, Central Junior High School opened in its building; it was soon renamed Dickinson Junior High, in large part because the county opened Central Grammar and Junior High around the same time (but soon that too was either closed of renamed). Dickinson Junior High closed in the late 1950s.

In the fall of 1963, Riverside High School, the city’s last new school under segregation, opened in Wyatt Hall, which has received east and west wings from the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. It closed in 1983, and now the building hosts Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences.

The Methodist Episcopal Church established Chattanooga University here in 1886, and merged it with Grant Memorial University at Athens in 1889 as U.S. Grant Memorial University. In 1907, the institution (both campuses) became the University of Chattanooga; the Athens campus separated to be its own in 1925. The UC consolidated with Chattanooga City College in 1969 to become the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Although the neighborhood hosts and has hosted an enormous number of Christian churches (including Chattanooga’s oldest, First Presbyterian) and one Jewish congregation, only two were actually born here. Christ Episcopal Church began in the former Judge Lewis Shepherd house at McCallie Street (Avenue) and D (Douglas) Street in 1900 and still meets at the same location in the building officially christened Christ Church (William Clendenin Robertson Memorial) in 1844. Central Church of Christ Chattanooga’s home has been at Vine and Lindsay Streets since its founding in 1909.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1851.

Brown’s Ferry is the northern section of Lookout Valley, more or less everything north of Cummings Highway to the Tennessee River, named for the ferry initially owned and operated by Cherokee leader John Brown, who also owned Brown’s Landing upriver and its attached Brown’s Tavern, still at its original location in front of Lookout Valley Elementary School.

Brown served as the judge for the Chickamauga District of the Cherokee Nation East and later became one of the last Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation West.

Brown’s Ferry was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1972.

Brown’s Valley is the valley north of Lookout Creek not directly drained by that stream so-named for John Brown of Landing, Tavern, and Ferry fame. It is also another local name for the community north of Tiftonia.

Brushy Knob was the name for the hill which is the core of the National Cemetery, at least in Union army sources, afterwards called Cemetery Hill.

Burgess Switch once lay, roughly, between Crutchfield Street and Ocoee Street, from the railroads to Missionary Ridge or North Chamberlain Avenue. The community got its name from the switch once connecting Burgess Station on the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (later Southern Railway) with Tinker’s Junction Station south of it on the Chattanooga Union Railway.

Once its whistle stop railroad station, which also served as an informal post office, was closed, Burgess gradually lost its separate identity and was absorbed into Avondale.

There was a contract postal station named Burgess Station that was absorbed into the East Chattanooga Station of the Chattanooga Post Office in 1905.

Jefferson Station depot on the Orchard Knob Division of the Union Railway stood at the intersection of Jefferson (Ocoee) Street and Harrison Pike-Dodson Avenue.

Burgess became part of the Town of East Chattanooga in 1917, and was annexed into the City of Chattanooga along with the rest of the former town in 1925.

Bushtown was the first black-governed municipality in the State of Tennessee. The former suburb now urban neighborhood lies mostly between the railroad and Orchard Knob Avenue from East 3rd Street to Citico Avenue but includes a few blocks north of the latter.

Bushtown was coextensive with a development known as East End Addition, no relation to East End Land Company. The impetus for its creation was the clearances of residents from the high grounds about Fort Creighton (Fort Wood) and Fort Palmer to create the affluent subdivisions of Fort Wood and Park Place. For a couple of decades it was the main center of black-owned businesses in the area, until that focus shifted to Churchville and The Big Nine. In 1900, Bushtown had a population of 584.

There was a Bushtown School until the end of the 1890s, when it was absorbed into Churchville School.

From the fall of 1914 through the end of spring semester in 1923, Bushtown hosted Abraham Lincoln High School, the county's high school for Afro-American students. When they city annexed the suburb, the high school was reduced to Lincoln Junior High, which was closed in the 1930s and its grades transferred to Orchard Knob School. A separate Orchard Knob Junior High opened in the fall of 1961 in Bushtown not far from the location of its predecessor.

The oldest church in Bushtown was Good Hope Primitive Baptist Church, founded as Monteagle Primitive Baptist in 1912, the name-change occurring in 1920. Bushtown Missionary Baptist Church, no longer extant, was founded in 1913.

Bushtown was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Cameron Hill as a geographic feature was the popular name for the hill that formed the western boundary of the original town of Chattanooga in 1839, and physically includes the spurs and knolls of Hawk (Reservoir) Hill, Terrace Hill, and College Hill, the latter giving its name to the entire section known to outsiders as the Westside.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and the Federal Military Occupation, several fortifications stood on Cameron Hill.

Chattanooga Magazine was dug deeply into the side of the hill along its entire length.

Signal Point sat on the apex of the hill.

Fort Crutchfield sat about a block south.

Fort Coolidge (Fort Rousseau) stood approximately at the intersection of West MLK Boulevard and Boynton Avenue.

Fort Mihalotzy (Fort Brannan) stood approximately at the intersection of West MLK Boulevard and Gateway Avenue.

In the postbellum years, especially during the operation of Roane Iron Works in the 1880s, the main hill became a prestigious West Side neighborhood, with two houses along its crest and others on Cameron Drive.

A spacious 10-acre Boynton Park once adorned its peak, only to become fill dirt for the freeway during the Golden Gateway project of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In its place, the Cameron Hill Apartments were constructed, now replaced by offices for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

From April 1889 to December 1991, the neighborhood and park were served by the Cameron Hill Incline and Street Railway.

Cameron Hill became part of the Town of Chattanooga in 1851 when the town extended itself to the Tennessee River to the west.

Cash Canyon was the local name for the Tennessee River Gorge that begins just below Williams Island that was also called the Suck and the Narrows from two of its river hazards.

Cash Canyon is also the community along Cash Canyon Road north of its intersection with O’Grady Drive and River Canyon Trail.

Shoals School opened here in the fall of 1907, across the river from Signal Point, just below Williams Island and next to the Tumbling Shoals. The school closed for World War I, reopening afterwards as Riverside School only to close again during the Great Depression.

With the exception of a largely uninhabited area between I-24 and US Highway 11 at the state line, it is the only area of Lookout Valley not yet annexed into the City of Chattanooga.

Cedar Grove was a depot on the Union Railway between its National Cemetery depot and Orchard Knob depot. It was also the name for the community west of Holtzclaw Avenue between Olympia (later Warner) Park and the National Cemetery, that included the section of what is now part of Orchard Knob west of Ruoh’s Crossing (Highland Park Avenue) between Carolina (East 5th) Street and McCallie Avenue, as well as what was then Hamilton County Hospital (roughly four blocks south of East 5th and east of Highland Park Avenue). In 1900, Cedar Grove had a population of 109.

Cedar Grove was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1905.

Cedar Hill lies at the foot of Missionary Ridge south of East 40th Street (its northern border was originally East 44th) and east of Rossville Boulevard.

Before the eponymous subdivision was created, this area was called Rossville, Tennessee, a name sometimes extended to Black Bottom-Boulevard Park west of Rossville Boulevard, much like the name Cedar Hill is now.

Rossville School was established here before the 1911-1912 school year; after annexation it became Cedar Hill School. During the 1960-1961 school year, it moved into a new building west of Rossville Boulevard in Black Bottom-Boulevard Park. Cedar Hill Elementary School closed between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s.

Rossville Methodist Episcopal Church, South came here in 1899, having previously been East End Methodist Church. Rossville Church of Christ was founded here in 1910; Rossville Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church was founded 1925.

Cedar Hill was annexed into the City of Chattanooga n 1925.

Central Park lies south of East 28th Street between South Hickory Street and Orchard Knob Avenue.

Chattanooga was originally the name of a Cherokee town (Tsatanugi) at the mouth of Chattanooga Creek in the vicinity of St. Elmo. The name was later adopted by residents of the community of Ross’ Landing at the foot of the bluff downtown when they chartered the Town of Chattanooga in 1839. In time, it became one of the major rail hubs in the South, serving as a terminal for at least six different long-haul railways.

Though it now takes in the entire area covered in this article and a lot more, the original town was confined to the area between the river in the north, Ninth Street (now MLK Boulevard) between Chestnut and Cherry Streets along with James Street (West MLK from Chestnut) to the bottom of Cypress Street in the south, Cypress Street on the west, and Georgia Avenue on the side of Brabson Hill in the east. Its main street has always been Market Street, while its second street, Broad, was first named Mulberry Street and becoming Railroad Avenue in 1850.

In 1851, the town reincorporated as the City of Chattanooga and annexed territory out to what are now Baldwin Street in the east and West 23rd Street (then Missionary Avenue) in the west; these were the city boundaries in the Civil War. After the war in 1869, the city expanded southeast to East End (Central) Avenue and southwest to Chattanooga Avenue (West 28th Street) (then ) in the West. Its next expansions came in the early 20th century, and at the end of the third quarter it grew exponentially.

The post office operated as Ross’ Landing 1837-1839, and since 1839 as Chattanooga.

Though Chattanooga has always had satellite communities since even before the Civil War, its real historic suburbs did not come into existence until its speedy and broad industrial expansion during its “Dynamo of Dixie” years in the latter 19th century.

Until the 1880s, the primary suburbs for Chattanooga were St. Elmo (originally named Kirklen) and Hill City on the north side of the river. With the economic boom of 1887, numerous suburbs spread out across the Chattanooga Valley beyond the city limits.

This birth and growth of these suburbs was supported by one of the country’s best streetcar systems, starting with in 1875 with horse-drawn cars, later adding steam-locomotive driven cars in 1885, and electric traction powered cars in 1889. From 1889 through most of 1891, the city was serviced by all three. The opening of the County (Walnut Street) Bridge paved the way for explosive growth north of the river, but those are covered elsewhere.

All communities using the name Chattanooga do so through a direct connection with the original Chattanooga.

Chattanooga Valley in Georgia gets its name from the creek flowing through it, which in turn gets its name from the Cherokee town of Tsatanugi at its mouth on the Tennessee River.

Chattanooga in Mercer County, Ohio, adopted the name in the late 1870s when the Cincinnati Southern Railway was being built between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the same way and for the same reasons Smith’s Crossroads in Rhea Co., Tennessee became Dayton.

Chattanooga in San Juan Co., Colorado, a mining (and now ghost) town established in 1883, was named by its first postmaster, Frank Carol, a native of the original Chattanooga in Tennessee.

Chattanooga in Comanche and Tillman Cos., Oklahoma, was established in 1902 on the former Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation and named by town developer N.C. Sisson, also a native of the original Chattanooga in Tennessee.

Chattanooga Creek rises from a large spring in Hidden Hollow at the eastern foot of Lookout Mountain in Walker County, Georgia.

Chattanooga Public Wharf once stood at the end of West Montgomery Avenue (West Main Street) on the Tennessee River.

Chattanooga National Cemetery is the nation’s first national military cemetery. Occupying the former Brushy Knob known after the Siege of Chattanooga as Bald Knob, it was first constructed by units of the 42nd and 44th U.S. Colored Troops, both of which were organized in Chattanooga. Originally the cemetery was confined to the hill and Jackson Park surrounded it on the flats that later were absorbed.

Chattanooga Valley, specifically the Lower Chattanooga Valley, lies between Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge and is drained by Chattanooga Creek.

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was the country’s first such park and is the one upon which all others have been based, though parks were also authorized that same year at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, Shiloh in West Tennessee, and Vicksburg in Mississippi. Its major components in southern Hamilton County include Lookout Mountain Battlefield Reservation (western slope of the mountain to Lookout Creek minus Reflectin Riding), Point Park, much of the lower eastern slope of the mountain, Moccasin Bend Archaeological District, and Orchard Knob Reservation, along with several points on Missionary Ridge: Sherman Reservation, 73rd Pennsylvania Reservation, De Long Reservation, Turchin Reservation, Ohio Reservation, and Bragg Reservation.

Chinch Row was a tenement section on South Whiteside (South Broad) Street in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Churchville is separated from Bushtown on the west by Orchard Knob Avenue, lying within Citico Avenue, East 3rd Street, and North Willow Street, and extending to Dodson Avenue between Blackford Street and East 3rd Street. Like Bushtown, Churchville originated as a black-governed municipality in the late 19th century. Despite popular myth, the suburb was not named due to its number of churches but after its primary developer. In 1900, Churchville (including Stanleyville) had a population of 614.

Churchville Station served the Union Railway after it was redesignated from Stanleyville; since it sat on the boundary between the two and since Churchville all but absorbed Stanleyville, it only involved a name change.

Churchville School operated here from the 1880s until being merged with Orchard Knob School at the end of the 1905-1906 school year.

The oldest church in Churchville proper, not counting those in Stanleyville, was Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1884. Mt. Olivet Primitive Baptist Church, no longer extant, was founded in the 1890s.

Churchville was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Citico City, often simply rendered as just Citico, lies north of East 3rd Street, between the railroad and Central (East End) Avenue, and is now better known as Lincoln Park after the adjacent public park. The suburb was established in the early 1880s for Afro-American workers at Citico Furnace, later serving employees of Southern Railway after the closure of the furnace. The present community is one-quarter to one-third its former size, originally taking up the remaining part of Lincoln Park to the north and doubling that amount of land on the east.

Transient workers for Southern Railway stayed at the Citico Hotel, in the former eastern half of Citico City now taken over by rail lines of Debutts (formerly Citico) Yards. The hotel was moved to Scruggs Street.

Lincoln Park, the first public park for Afro-Americans in Tennessee and the South, opened in 1918 (see the separate entry).

In its earliest years, the children of the community were served by the tiny one-room Gillespie School.

Tucker’s Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1906, was the community's most important church. The community also hosted the Church of the Living God and three other churches.

Citico City was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Citico Creek rises from Indian Springs, now beneath what used to be Parkwood Nursing Home, in northern Glenwood.

Citico Junction was the name for the area west of the junction of the Western & Atlantic Railroad and Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway, which originally lay west across from the end of Wilson Street, with an ill-defined north limit. The name derives from the Gardenhire farm called Citico which straddled the eponymous creek, itself named after the Cherokee village once here, which was in turn named after a Cherokee town on the Little Tennessee River.

Citico Junction was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Citico Mound once dominated the area on the right bank of Citico Creek at its mouth on the Tennessee River. A rough oval standing 28 feet high, 150 feet long, and 65 feet wide, this platform mound had been the focal point of what was from 1200 to 1450 the dominant town of the Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and, maybe, Northeast Alabama region.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and Federal Military Occupation, a blockhouse stood on top of the mound.

Citico Mound was almost entirely obliterated during the building of Riverside Drive in 1915, at the time part of Dixie Highway.

City Center (see Downtown)

Clifton Hills straddles Rossville Boulevard below East 28th Street down to East 32nd Street east of Rossville Boulevard and to East 33rd Street west of it. It was created in 1886 by John C. Roberts out of the Oakland plantation, whose origins lie in the antebellum period.

Radcliff Station of the Radcliff Division of Union Railway stood at the community’s southern outskirts. Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus Railroad (later Central of Georgia Railway) also used the depot at this station, even after Union Railway ceased to exist but called it East End.

The post office of Divine operated here 1881-1887.

The city created Clifton Hills School shortly after annexation of the suburb, and it still operates as Clifton Hills Elementary School.

The only church in Clifton Hills was Clifton Hills Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1924.

Clifton Hills was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Cocaine Alley was the nickname for Douglas Street Alley, aka Smith Place, perpendicular to Douglas Street from Mabel to University Streets between Gilmer (East 8th) and Branham (East 9th) Streets, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The alley was later renamed as a detached section of Flinn Street, but is no longer extant. Although many of its residents were law-abiding, the place was a magnet for street crime. There was another less known place so-called just east of the Five Points area on the West Side between Eighth (East 8th) and James (East 9th) Streets with an outlet on Pine Street.

College Hill, colloquially known as Westside, is the district of the West Side renamed after an affluent neighborhood in Cincinnati in the late 19th century, although it was still called by its original name, Star Fort Hill, into the first two decades of the 20th century. Its most prominent geographic feature is Academy Hill, named after the school once held in the Masonic Hall, actually an eastern spur south of Cameron Hill.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and the Federal Military Occupation in the War of the Rebellion, Fort Lytle, or Star Fort, stood on Academy Hill, where the Masonic Academy served as a hospital. The newer name was adopted after arrival of the Cincinnati Southern Railway.

As a neighborhood in the city, College Hill took in the spur called Academy Hill along with the adjacent flats east to Broad Street south from West 9th Street to West Main Street (an area formerly known as Nashville Flats).

The first name for the postbellum community was Star Fort Hill, a name used geographically well into the 20th century, but the community came to be called College Hill in the 1880s after the same-named community in the City of Cincinnati after the arrival of the Cincinnati Southern Railway..

The 497-unit College Hill Courts, blacks-only until desegregation, were constructed by the city in 1941.

Black students also attended Montgomery Avenue School (Main and College), beginning in 1888. It was later renamed Main Street School along with its street, then becoming West Main Street School in the late 1930s. Main Street Elementary School continued serving its students until it fell to the Golden Gateway project in the 1950s.

Second District (formerly Third Ward) School (Cedar and West 11th) was initially whites-only, but in the late 1920s was turned over for the education of black students. In the 1940s, it expanded into Second District Elementary and Junior High School. By the 1950s, the elementary grades were dropped and it was just Second District Junior High. Like West Main Street Elementary, Second District Junior High School fell victim to the Golden Gateway project.

James A. Henry School opened on Grove Street in 1937; after construction of College Hill Courts, its children were its primary beneficiaries. James A. Henry Elementary was a victim of the mass school closings of 1989.

The predominant church in College Hill was Second Missionary Baptist Church, organized as Wauhatchie Missionary Baptist in October 1866. It moved to Blue Goose Hollow in the late 1879s before opening its building on Leonard Street as Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist in College Hill in 1880, with its third pastor changing the church to its present name. It remained in the West Side until 1975, moving that year to East 3rd Street. Leonard Street Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. was founded in 1888.

College Hill was mostly destroyed by the Golden Gateway urban renewal or “Negro removal” project of the late 1950s and early 1960s along with the all the rest of West Side. Displaced persons relocated to the new Spencer McCallie Homes specifically built for that purpose, which were in turn demolished in the 21st century, only this time with no provision for its residents to relocate. The neighborhood remains as the College Hill Courts; until being demolished to make way for Finley Stadium, one small street of row-houses had also survived the earlier eradication.

See also West Side.

Cross Roads, so named for being the intersection of the first two post roads in the later Chattanooga (intersection of St. Elmo Avenue and West 38th Street) opened in 1820, was an antebellum community adjacent to Kirklen that was later absorbed into it.

Cummings Bottoms along Lookout Creek are the land upon which John Walter Cummings built a house in 1862 for wife Rebecca Fryar, and is now home to the Cummings Cove subdivision and golf course.

Cummings Gap runs through Raccoon Mountain connecting Lookout Valley with Kelly’s Ferry on the Tennessee River.

Curtain Pole was the community in the vicinity of the H.L. Judd Factory, built in 1890. It was also known as Amnicola and lay along what is now Judd Road off Amnicola Highway but was originally the northern end of Curtain Pole Road. The original Curtain Pole Road predates the Riverside Drive section of the original Dixie Highway constructed in 1915 by a couple of decades and provided the foundation for much of the later Amnicola Highway.

A school for children of the factory workers called Chickamauga School opened here in the late 1890s and was still open in 1908, possibly longer; it was probably privately owned by the company. The public Perry School opened here in the 1910s, getting a new name to go with its new building in 1926 as Amnicola School, which operated until closed by the city upon annexation of the area in 1968.

The only church was Sherman Hill Church of Christ, founded 1915. It relocated to Sherwood Forest Addition sometime after 1939.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1968.

Darktown was once the name for the area from the south side of Gilmer (East 8th) Street to the Belt Line, including Branham (East 9th), Leonard (East 10th), and Gillespies (East 11th) Streets, east of Irish Hill and west of East Tennesee, Virginia, & Georgia, later Southern, Railway (the original route of the ETV&G into the city followed the line of the current greenway through UTC campus). The name derived from its lack of street lighting, which, naturally, made it a magnet for crime.

Darktown Alley was the name for the alley in the ravine between College Hill and Terrace Hill.

Divine was a post office that operated approximately in the later Clifton Hills area 1881-1897; not to be confused with the northern community just west of Divine Gap through Stringer’s Ridge.

Doty’s Junction lay about halfway between Alton Park and South Alton Park, so named for its rail station which served both the Union Railway and the Central of Georgia Railway.

The area became part of the City of Alton Park in 1917, was annexed along with it into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Downtown officially has always been the same as the original town of Chattanooga as set out in 1839, minus four of the original streets west of Pine Street (Poplar, Cedar, Cypress, Pleasant) obliterated by the construction of the I-124 (now US 27) freeway. The tourist industry now refers to it as City Center, though this term covers a larger area, which is also the case with many uses of the term “downtown”. To some, this means everything between Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, which is not exactly incorrect if imprecise.

For the purposes here, downtown means the original town area and areas immediately proximate.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and the Federal Military Occupation during the War of the Rebellion, there were two major fortifications in the downtown area.

Fort Jones, or Stone Fort, stood where the Customs House is now, hosting the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts and originally the Old Main Post Office.

The first public school in downtown was Howard Free School, begun in 1866 and meeting initially in the former Bragg Hospital at Sixth and Chestnut Streets, until moving to its own building at Branham (East 9th) and A (Lindsay) Streets in 1871. In 1883, Howard opened in a new building outside downtown at Gillespie (East 11th) and Clift (Douglas) Streets, while the Manual Training School occupied its former facility.

First Ward (First District) School and Third Ward (Second District) School began downtown in 1873, the first in a small schoolhouse on Georgia Avenue, the second in a rented building on Sixth Street just west of Market until moving into the Masonic Academy about 1880.

The only period in which Chattanooga High School met downtown was 1897-1905, when it operated at 111 Gilmer (East 8th) Street.

Chestnut Street School opened at Chestnut and Fourth in 1912. In the 1920s, it was replaced by H. Clay Evans School at Sixth and Poplar. By the dawn of the 1960s, it had fallen victim to the Golden Gateway project.

Chattanooga Vocational School (9-12) opened at Chestnut and Fourth Streets in the fall of 1928, and changed its name to Chattanooga Technical School two years later. In 1940, it returned to the name Chattanooga Vocational School, becoming Kirkman Vocational in 1943. In the mid-1960s, it became Kirkman Technical High School, the name it carried when the city closed it down in 1991.

Some early white churches in downtown:

First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, U.S. was founded June 1840.

Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church was also founded in 1840.

First Baptist Church of Chattanooga was likewise also founded in 1840.

Chattanooga First Cumberland Presbyterian Church was founded in 1841.

Sts. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Church was founded in 1852.

St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church was founded in 1853.

First Methodist Episcopal Church, South was founded in 1865.

Second Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, U.S.A. was founded in 1871.

First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ was also founded in 1871.

First Lutheran Church was founded in 1887.

Some early black churches in downtown:

First Baptist Church East 8th Street was organized as Shiloh Baptist in 1866 by Afro-American Union veterans.

Wiley Memorial Methodist Church was founded in 1867.

First Congregational Church was founded in 1867 and originally intended to be integrated, but in practice became solely a black church.

Warren’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in 1871.

Early Jewish congregations in downtown:

Mizpah Reformed Jewish Congregation, founded in 1866 as the Hebrew Benevolent Association.

B’Nai Zion Conservative Congregation, founded in 1888 as the Brethren from B’Nai Chen Orthodox Congregation.

Shaare Zion Orthodox Congregation, founded in 1904, had its temple at Carlisle Place but its cemetery in Brainerd next to Pleasant Gardens.

Dudley Row was a tenement west of St. Elmo Avenue and north of where East 36th Street is now.

East 8th Street, once known as Gilmer Street, runs from Palmetto Street to Central (formerly East End) Avenue. Until UTC expanded in the 21st century, the residential neighborhood extended west all the way to Douglas Street, and on the south side to Houston. Historically, East 8th Street’s upper end was part of Brabson Hill, its middle section was part of Scruggstown/The Big Nine, and its lower end was part of Fort Wood. Nowadays, its residential section at the lower end is considered a neighborhood in its own right.

East Chattanooga (see also Boyce and Sherman Heights) first entered local parlance with the grand scheme of the East Chattanooga Land Company in 1889, with the town of Boyce and its post office both changing their names to East Chattanooga.

The original plan of the ECLC did not include Boyce; instead it was to be an elaborately planned town in three sections: East Chattanooga (East Section) east of the railroad tracks to North Chamberlain Avenue and north of Boyce, whose upper boundary was Sims Street; East Chattanooga (Middle Section) west of the tracks and south from Chickamauga River to Cushman Street; and East Chattanooga (West, or possibly South, Section), south of Cushman Street. The last section may have been equivalent to what is shown on some maps of the period as Anderson's Addition. The farthest the project got, however, was laying out plots in the first two sections and grading streets in the second.

In 1905, the independent local post offices (some of them informal) of East Chattanooga, Sherman Heights, Avondale, Burgess Station, McCarty Station, Jersey, and Bartlebaugh were moved to Chattanooga and local mail service came out of the Chattanoooga P.O.’s satellite branch East Chattanooga Station (located in Sherman Heights at the intersection of Dodson Avenue and Glass Street). Soon, locals began using the name for a wider area, even including Citico (Citico City, now Lincoln Park, and Citico Rail Yards). The Rural Free Delivery service operating out of Sherman Heights P.O. since 1901 also transferred to the new E.C. Station.

When Southern Railway rebuilt its station in Sherman Heights in 1914, it renamed the station East Chattanooga.

In 1917, the Town of East Chattanooga was chartered, taking in everything from the northern borders (including Trueblood and Billy Goat Hills) of the former Boyce and Sherman Heights (divided at Taylor Street) south to Ocoee Street, the portion between that and Crutchfield Street approximately that of the former Burgess, along the west side of the tracks of the Norfolk & Southern and Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific railroads to Riverside Drive. Once the town was chartered, East Chattanooga Branch of the Chattanooga P.O. officially became the independent post office of East Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In 1920, East Chattanooga School (Colored) closed at its location in East Chattanooga, 2416 Dodson Avenue, and reopened in a larger, more centrally located building at 906 Dodson Avenue in Avondale.

The Town of East Chattanooga dissolved in 1923 to become part of the City of Chattanooga along with the suburbs/voting precincts of Avondale and Churchville (the latter including Bushtown, Rosstown, Stanleyville, Citico City, and the remainder of Orchard Knob Grove left out of the annexation in 1905 as well) as the city’s Twelfth Ward, and the name East Chattanooga soon spread to include all of Orchard Knob. Full annexation was, however, held up for two years because of challenges to the results in two of the precincts in which the vote was very close.

The 500-unit Boone-Hysinger Courts, whites-only until desegregation of public housing, were built by the city in 1952. In 1985, they became Harriet Tubman Homes. The city demolished 60 of its units in 2005 and the rest in 2014. The site will become home to a paint factory.

The remaining East Chattanooga School operated as East Chattanooga Elementary School until falling victim to the mass school closings of 1989.

The city opened Richard Hardy Junior High School here in the late 1920s, which operated until 1989, when it became Hardy Elementary, as which it continues to this day.

The city opened Mary Ann Garber Elementary School in the 1950s, primarily to serve the children of Boone-Hy Courts. It closed along with Harriet Tubman Homes.

The former Town of East Chattanooga was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

East End, a name which has largely disappeared from usage except maybe by longer term residents, was for a long time one of Chattanooga’s largest suburbs, home to a sizable working class population that worked in many of the surrounding factories. Currently it lies south of East 34th Street between Jerome Avenue, Workman (formerly Hamill) Road, and 7th Avenue, though many people refer to the area as part of East Lake. At one point there was an attempt to rename it South Lowell, but that never took off. In 1900, the population of East End was 985.

Radcliff Station of the Radcliff Division of Union Railway stood at the community’s northern outskirts. Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus Railroad (later Central of Georgia Railway) also used the depot at this station, even after Union Railway ceased to exist, but called it East End. This was more than a bit confusing since Union Railway also had a separate East End Station further south at the intersection of Rossville Boulevard and East 44th Street.

The post office of East End, sometimes called Radcliff, operated out of a store two blocks east and one block south of Radcliff Station 1888-1914.

East End School operated here for white students in the late 1800s but closed at the end of the century. In 1910, it was reopened for black students but closed by the city after annexation.

Divine’s Chapel Methodist Church began here in 1870. In 1887, the congregation incorporated as East End Methodist, which it remained until they moved to Rossville/Cedar Hill in 1899.

The oldest church here in 1940 was Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1904. The only white church then was Clio Avenue Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1940.

East End was annexed into the city of Chattanooga in 1925.

East Lake lies along the foot of Missionary Ridge between East 28th and East 40th Streets and 7th Avenue, its central attraction being the beautiful East Lake Park, Chattanooga’s very first public park. In 1900, the population of East Lake was 544.

The post office of Eastlake operated 1893-1912.

The suburb had two stations on the Union Railway, serving both its Ridgedale Division and its Radcliff Division. Grandview Station, overlooking East Lake Park, was the main stop, the lesser important East Lake Station stood at East 37th Street and 7th Avenue.

East Lake School began in the late 19th century and continues today as East Lake Elementary School. East Lake Junior High joined it in the late 1920s and continues today as East Lake Academy of Fine Arts.

The oldest church here was Union Congregational Church, founded 1892. The oldest white church here was East Lake United Methodist Church, founded in 1908 as Ida Bass Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South; East Lake UMC was dissolved by the Holston Conference in 2010.

East Lake was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

East Lake Park was established by Charles E. James and donated to the city in 1896, becoming Chattanooga’s first public park. From 1898 to 1915, the park also hosted Oxley Zoo. It once included a springhouse for drinking water, supplied by the same springs from which the lake was created. Grandview Station on the Belt Line brought passengers directly to the park.

East St. Elmo (see South Alton Park)

East Side originally ran between East MLK Boulevard (formerly East 9th Street) and the river from Georgia Avenue to Baldwin Street, or, more practically at the time, to the old line of the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (ETV&G). Later it extended with the city limits to East End/Central Avenue. At one time the East Side included some of the most posh neighborhoods in the city, along with some of its worst slum areas (Onion Bottom).

Some of the East Side has been taken over by buildings and parking lots for Unum Provident, but most of the East Side that has disappeared has been swallowed up by the growing campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Much of this growth has been in the 21st century; for instance, when I was here at UTC in the early 1980s, East 5th Street School still operated; its former site is now UTC visitor’s parking garage.

Eden Park was a suburb later absorbed into Highland Park, though the city now counts it as part of Ridgedale, from Orchard Knob Avenue east to Buckley Street, south of Anderson Avenue to East Main Street. In 1900, the population of Eden Park was 117.

Eden Park was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913.

Edgewood (see New England Park)

Elmwood lies along Huff Place and Tinsley Place south of East 19th Street to include the north side of East 21st Street.

Endline (see Mountain Junction)

Engel Stadium was built at Andrews Field and opened in 1930. Andrews Field was built 1910-1911 to host the Lookouts baseball team transferred from Little Rock, Arkansas, after the 1910 season ended. The stadium, named for local real estate developer and major baseball promoters Joe Engel, former pitcher with the major league Washington Senators. The stadium was home to the Chattanooga Lookouts 1930-1961, 1963-1965, and 1976-1999, who moved to their new stadium on Kirkman Hill in 2000. Andrew Field and Engel Stadium were also home to Negro League teams the Chattanooga White Sox (with which Satchel Paige got his professional start in 1926), the Chattanooga Choo-Choos (including a young Willie Mays), and the Chattanooga Black Lookouts.

Ferger Place was a very posh subdivision in Oak Grove suburb on Morningside and Eveningside Drives, joined at their southern ends by Ferger Place Curve, which was originally a section of East 19th Street. It remains quite attractive.

Ferger Place was annexed into the City of Chattanooga along with Oak Grove in 1913.

Five Points, geographically, was the name for the intersection of James (West 9th), Eighth (West 8th), and Cedar Streets, which lent itself to the immediate vicinity. It was obliterated in the construction of the West 9th Street (West MLK Boulevard) interchange with I-124.

Ford’s Gap is the ravine between Trueblood (Tunnel) Hill of Missionary Ridge and Billy Goat Hill.

Forest Hills Cemetery north of Hawkins Ridge divides Alton Park from St. Elmo. Unusual for the time it was established, as a whole it is racially integrated even if within whites and blacks are buried in different sections, though that doesn’t apply to modern burials. It was established in 1874 as Oakwood Cemetery.

Forest Hills Station served the Mountain Division of the Union Railway.

From 1911, the cemetery was part of the Town of St. Elmo, and was annexed along with it into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Fort Cheatham is south of the freeway to East 29th Street between Westside Drive and 8th Avenue. Originally it was where Maj. Gen. John Breckenridge had his headquarters, and thus Fort Breckenridge; the actual Fort Cheatham was taken over by the Army of the Cumberland and renamed Fort Negley, then Fort Phelps. It is, ironically (given its namesake), one of Chattanooga’s oldest historically black suburbs. In 1900, the population of Fort Cheatham was 466.

The 437-unit East Lake Courts, whites-only until desegregation of public housing, were built by the city in 1940 south of East 23rd Street to East 28th Street between Fourth Avenue and Sixth Avenue.

Fort Cheatham Station served the Ridgedale Division of the Union Railway.

Fort Cheatham School began in the late 1800s under Hamilton County and survived until desegregation in the 1960s. In early 20th century editions of the Chattanooga City Directory, it is listed as Forty-sixth District School.

The oldest church here was Harris Chapel, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded 1879, and well into the 20th century there was also a Fort Cheatham Missionary Baptist Church. The oldest white church was United Church of God, founded 1929.

Fort Cheatham was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Fort Negley, built around the site of the Civil War fort of that name, stands east of Market Street to Rossville Avenue and Washington Street, between East Main and East 20th Streets.

Though the redoubt which gave the neighborhood its name had this designation from the Siege of Chattanooga until the Atlanta Campaign began in spring 1964, when the name was officially changed to Fort Phelps for the rest of the Federal Military Occupation. The original fort was built by Confederate soldiers of the Army of Tennessee who called it Fort Cheatham (the actual Fort Cheatham).

The oldest church here was St. James Methodist Church, founded 1885. The oldest black church was New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1905.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1851.

Fort Wood originally occupied the area from the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (Southern Railway) to East End (Central) Avenue between Harrison Avenue (East 3rd Street) and McCallie Avenue, but it’s practical western boundary since the 1980s has been Palmetto Street. It is named for the redoubt built here during the Siege of Chattanooga and named Fort Wood, which it remained until shortly before the Atlanta Campaign, when it became Fort Creighton for the rest of began the Federal Military Occupation.

After the Civil War, former slaves lived in the area here called Tadetown. During the boom of the 1880s, Fort Wood Addition in the immediate vicinity of the redoubt gave its name to everything east of the ETV&G tracks, including the remaining homes of Tadetown.

East Fifth Street School operated here just east of the crossing of the ETV&G (SOU), adjacent to the Steele Home for Needy Children (the street used to extend all the way). In name, the school survived integration, merging with Clara Carpenter Elementary School and occupying the latter’s building under the name East Fifth Street Elementary School, later becoming East Fifth Street Junior High School until closing sometime in the early 1980s.

The oldest church here was Central Baptist Church, founded 1887 at McCallie Avenue and Palmetto Street. Trinity Methodist Church joined it at McCallie Avenue and Parkview Avenue in 1888. The oldest black church was Allen’s Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded 1892, and until the 1920s there was also a Fort Wood Missionary Baptist Church.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1869.

Foust Place lies east of Rossville Boulevard to Orchard Knob Avenue, south from East 25th (Vulcan) Street to East 28th Street (Dobbs Road).

Foust Place was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Frog City was a tenement section in the middle of East End of about a hundred little cottages.

Gamble Town was the section of St. Elmo at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries centered along Harris Street (now Florida Avenue) populated by Afro-Americans.

The area became part of the Town of St. Elmo, and was annexed along with it into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Glenwood lies north of McCallie Avenue next to Missionary Ridge, west to Derby Street and north to East 3rd Street, taking in Derby Circle, taking in the former communities of Indian Springs and Suburba. Founded in 1901, by the 1910 census just ten families inhabited the area. It occupies what was originally known as the Maguire Tract.

McCallie Avenue (formerly Suburba) Station of the Mission Ridge Division of Chattanooga Electric Railway operated here.

Glenwood School opened in the fall of 1930, but closed by the mid-1970s.

Glenwood was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1922.

Glass Farm District (see Sherman Heights)

Gobbler’s Peak is a knoll near Bozentown whose crest lies within the block made by Belle Arbor Avenue, Farleigh Street, Bliss Avenue, and Farleigh Avenue of Torber’s Subdivision. It also gave its name to the community, the bulk of which lay astride what was then North 10th Street or Boardman Avenue and is now Belle Arbor Avenue, but was also scattered about in the vicinity. The community was big enough to host its own baseball team in the city’s amateur league for several decades.

Griffith Heights (see Battery Heights)

Happy Hollow was a late 19th/early 20th tenement section east of White’s Hill in South Chattanooga.

Harrisburg was an attempt to create a suburb to the southeast of the intersection of Hamill (Workman) Road and Royal Avenue (Wilson Road) during the building boom of the late 1880s. Anything left did not survive the construction of Emma Wheeler Homes in 1964.

Hawkins’ Ridge is the narrow hill dividing St. Elmo from Alton Park.

Hayne’s Flats were a group of tenements on Kerr and Webster Streets (the latter no longer extant) from Mary (later Pelham, now East 18th) Street to Rossville Avenue.

Hell’s Half Acre was one of the most interestingly-named areas of Chattanooga, and there were actually three so-called. The “main” Hell’s Half Acre was in Orange Grove between East 16th Street and the railroad to the south, taking in Doris, Fillmore, Fagan, and Polk Streets within those bounds. There was another Hell’s Half Acre next to Tannery Flats and yet one more Hell’s Half Acre on Moyses Street between West 20th and West 21st Streets, from Locust (Cedar) Street to the Belt Line.

Highland Park lies from Holtzclaw Avenue to Lyerly Street between McCallie Avenue and East Main Street. The elevated part of the suburb is the Civil War-era Indian Hill. Highland Park proper is the section lying north of Anderson Avenue.

The Town of Highland Park was incorporated in 1899 with borders being the Belt Line on Holtzclaw Avenue, McCallie Avenue, Buckley Street (a former right-of-way for the Belt Line), and Anderson Street. In 1900, the population of Highland Park was 1,690.

The post office of Highland Park operated 1894-1898 after being moved from Orchard Knob.

Highland Park hosted three depots on the Ridgedale Division of Union Railway along Anderson Avenue: Henderson Station at Holtzclaw Avenue, Hickory Street Station, and Francis Avenue Station at Willow Street.

Highland Park School was first established in 1899 along with the town. It was annexed into the Chattanooga City Schools in 1904 (a year before the town) and became Fourth District School. It stood on the southeast corner of Bailey Avenue and Ruoh’s Crossing (Highland Park Avenue) across from the original Highland Park Methodist Episcopal Church.

Highland Park Grammar School opened for the 1921-1922 school year at its location on Hawthorne Street between Kirby and Union Avenues. As Highland Park Elementary, it lasted until the mass closings of 1989.

The first church organized here was Highland Park Methodist Episcopal Church, now Asbury United Methodist, established 1887. Beech Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Highland Park MES after moving to Union Avenue, now St. Andrews UMC) and Highland Park Baptist Church were both organized in 1890.

Tennessee Temple University, attached to Highland Park Baptist, operated here 1946-2015. Its parent church had already relocated to Harrison, opening in January 2013 as Church of the Highlands.

Highland Park was annexed to the City of Chattanooga in 1905 with boundaries of Holtzclaw Avenue, McCallie Avenue, Lyerly Street, and East Main Street.

Hobo’s Paradise was in the former Eleventh Street School, abandoned in the early 1920s, on the north side of the street between Foster and Clift (now Douglas) Streets, especially during the Great Depression.

Hodge’s Row was a group of tenements on Cravens (East 12th) Street at Fairview Avenue.

Hooterville lies south of the freeway (Missionary Avenue, or West 23rd Street, before the freeway) to Chattanooga Creek. That’s the name the locals and those who know them have given it.

The city opened the 188-unit Maurice Poss Homes here in 1963, to the east of the Howard School campus. They were demolished in 2006.

Howard High School moved here from College Hill/Westside to the east of Market Street across from the main part of Hooterville in 1954, and remains to this day.

The oldest church in Hooterville was St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1897.

The area was annexed to the City of Chattanooga in 1869.

Hustle (see Mountain Junction)

Indian Hill is the high ground upon which the core of Highland Park sits.

Indian Springs was what the northern portion of what later became Glenwood was before that suburb appeared on the map, so-called for the springs at the site of one of the two internment camps during the Cherokee Removal in Hamilton County. Indian Springs was a stop on the Belt Line, at least in its early years. The population of Indian Springs in 1900 was 34. The land became part of Glenwood, which was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1922.

Irish Hill (1) once sat between Cherry, Houston, Gilmer (East 8th) Street, and Branham (East 9th) Street (now East MLK Boulevard). The first railroads into Chattanooga (Western & Atlantic and East Tennessee & Georgia) were built by the same workforce that did so elsewhere in the country: immigrant Irish. Most accounts tell that this population disappeared with the arrival of the Civil War. However, that leaves unexplained how the Irish of Chattanooga contributed a an entire “regiment” to the Fenian Brotherhood’s Army of Irish Liberation for the invasion of Canada in 1867. Sts. Peter and Paul Church is all that remains today of that community.

Irish Hill (2) (See Terrace Hill)

Jackson Park once surrounded the National Military Park, which was then limited to the hill known as Brushy Knob and surrounded by a stone wall. The public park occupied the flatlands.

Jefferson Heights lies east of Fort Negley but straddles Main Street, with Madison Street as its east boundary and the railroad to the south.

The neighborhood hosted Jefferson Street School from the early 1910s, which became William J. Davenport Elementary School in the 1950s. It closed in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Antioch Missionary Baptist Church was founded here in 1934.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1851.

King’s Bridge (see Old Boyce)

Kirklintown was an early settlement of Hamilton County that took up what later became St. Elmo, Alton Park, and Rustville (Whiteside/South Broad Street).

The post office of Kirklin operated 1882-1888, when it moved to St. Elmo.

Lake Lookout is privately owned, south of Elder Mountain Road in Brown’s Valley.

Lenora Springs (see Lookout Mountain)

Lincoln Park, opened in 1918 by Ed Herron, then Commissioner of Parks, once covered the entire area between East End (Central) Avenue and Wiehl Street. It was the city’s and county’s first park for black residents under Jim Crow. The park originally hosted a playground, a dance pavilion, a carousel, a ballfield, a miniature golf course, and refreshment stands. A swimming pool was added in 1937.

The ballfield was home to the Chattanooga Black Cats and hosted games of the Chattanooga Choo-Choos, Chattanooga Black Lookouts, and Chattanooga White Sox, all of which were teams of the nation’s Negro Leagues when the game was segregated along with much of the country. Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, and Jackie Robinson all played here.

After desegregation in the 1960s, attendance and upkeep declined. A much reduced park remains, owned since 1979 by Erlanger Hospital, which has recently cut off public access.

See also Citico City.

Little Egypt was a majority Afro-American district west of Dodson Avenue and north from the Southern Railway to include at least the south side of Farleigh Street, with a substantial white, mostly poor minority. Sherman Heights School (Colored), later East Chattanooga School (Colored) stood in its northern section until annexation, as did Rock Island Missionary Baptist Church, while Sholar Avenue Baptist Church stood in its southern section.

Lookout Creek rises near Valleyhead, Alabama, flowing north opposite Wills Creek, which also rises near Valleyhead but flows south.

Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, was incorporated in 1890, the same year Crawfish Springs, Georgia, changed its name to Chickamauga in honor of the soon-to-be national military park. It’s still independent. The Cherokee name for the mountain is Atali-danda-ganu.

In the War of the Rebellion, the Battle of Lookout Mountain was fought here 24 November 1863. During the Federal Military Occupation, Fort Stanley (originally Fort King, Fort Stevenson under the Confederates) stood here, supported by two blockhouses.

Lookout Mountain had several local railroads in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Lookout Point Incline Railroad (Incline No. 1) Mount Lookout Railway (Narrow Gauge Railroad) operated 1886-1899.

Mount Lookout Railway (aka the Narrow Gauge ) operated 1887-1899.

Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain Railway (the Broad Gauge) operated 1889-1928 (as Surface Car Line Railway after 1901) .

Lookout Mountain Incline and Lula Lake Railway (Incline No. 2) began operating in 1895, and since the Lula Lake line was never built, the name was changed and still operates today as Lookout Moutain Incline Railway.

The oldest church here was Lookout Mountain Presbyterian U.S., founded 1892. The oldest black church was Lookout Mountain Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1904.

Lookout Mountain School opened in the 1920s and continues today as Lookout Mountain Elementary School.

The post office operated here as Lenora Springs 1858-1866 and as Lookout Mountain since 1867.

Lookout Valley as a geographic feature is the valley carved by Lookout Creek from Valleyhead, Alabama, north to the Tennessee River, between Lookout Mountain on the east and Sand Mountain on the west. In Hamilton County, the name also refers to the community from the stateline to the Tennessee River.

The Cherokee town of Tuskegee was there before the Removal, and for a long time the area was called Wauhatchie. It acquired the name Tiftonia from a late 19th century housing development. However, to locals this name meant just the middle section straddling Cummings Highway; the northern section was Brown’s Ferry and the southern section near the railroad station was and still is Wauhatchie. The community of Cash Canyon along the Tennessee River is included as well.

During the Siege of Chattanooga in 1863, the Battle of Brown’s Ferry was fought here 27 October and the Battle of Wauhatchie 28-29 October. In the Federal Military Occupation, Fort Hooker guarded the approach to Brown’s Ferry from Kelly’s Ferry Road.

The post office of Lookout Valley operated 1834-1848. The post office of Wauhatchie, Tennessee (as opposed to the post office of Wauhatchie, Georgia) operated 1866-1918.

Wauhatchie Station at Wauhatchie Junction has served the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, and the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad and their successors for nearly 160 years.

From the late 1860s through the early decades of the 20th century, the N&C and later Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway operated Lookout Station as a schedule stop just east of the Kelly’s Ferry Road-Wauhatchie Pike crossroads.

In addition to Shoals School and its post-World War I successor Riverside School (see Cash Canyon), Lookout Valley hosted Wauhatchie School and Wauhatchie School (Colored) at the dawn of the 20th century. Wauhatchie School (Colored) was combined with St. Elmo School (Colored) before the end of the first decade.

In 1910, Wauhatchie School and Shoals School were joined by Patten’s Chapel School, into which Wauhatchie School merged the following school year. Patten’s Chapel School relocated and became John A. Patten School at the start of the 1930s.

Valleyview Elementary School opened its doors in 1962, and John A. Patten Elementary was merged into it at the end of the 1988-1989 school year. In 1992, the parents and community voted to change its name to Lookout Valley Elementary School.

Lookout Valley Junior High School opened in the early 1960s. By the time of Lookout Valley’s annexation, it had been expanded into Lookout Valley Junior High and High School.

The oldest church here is Wauhatchie United Methodist Church, which began as Cedar Grove Methodist before the War of the Rebellion; around 1882, the congregation adopted the name Wauhatchie Methodist.

The other antebellum church was Lookout Valley Primitive Baptist Church, which closed its doors in 1957.

Almost all of Lookout Valley, minus Cash Canyon and a portion on the state line between the freeway and US Highway 11, was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1972.

Mahogany Hall, owned and operated by John S. Lovell, nephew of locally famous William “Uncle Bill” Lewis, once occupied the entire block where Miller Park is now. The three-story establishment of finest brick was included a hotel, restaurants, saloons, casino, dancehall, and brothel. During the war, it had been the Confederate military prison, and before that, the slave auction block. It operated there into the 20th century.

Marr Aviation Field was opened by the Chattanooga City Chamber of Commerce in 1919, dedicated to local aviation pioneer Walter L. Marr, in the open area bound by the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railroad and Cincinnati Southern Railway to the west, Dodson Avenue to the east, Avondale to the south, and Anderson (now Crutchfield) Street to the north. The airfield’s hanger and shops stood north of what would have been Anderson Street. It ceased to operate in 1934.

Melrose was a late 19th century suburb also known as Watkins’ Addition north of East 5th Street to Blackford Street between Dodson Avenue and Derby Street. It was later absorbed into Glenwood.

Mindell Park was a fashionable, though less prestigious than Ferger Place, suburb west of Oak Grove. It lay along Orchard Knob Avenue and Hawthorne Street from Montgomery Avenue (East Main Street) south to Missionary Avenue (East 23rd Street). It was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913 along with Oak Grove.

Mission Junction, also Ridge Junction and Mission Ridge Junction, once lay between Missionary Ridge Taxing District and Lyerly Street from Kirby Avenue to McCallie Avenue. It was comprised of the old McCallie farm (the McCallie School after 1905), the Chamberlain Avenue Addition to Highland Park, and the eastern end of Highland Park Avenue Addition No. 2.

The suburb got its name from the junction of the Belt Line and later Chattanooga Electric Railway with Missionary Ridge Incline Railway at Chamberlain and Dodds Avenues. The earlier junction of the Missionary Ridge Incline Railway with the Union Railway was a wye junction at Anderson Avenue and Buckley Street, with the Union Railway’s Ridgedale Junction Station at the northeast corner of Bruce (East 12th) Street and Buckley Street.

The neighborhood hosted the county’s Central High School from 1907 to 1966, when it moved to Harrison, Tennessee.

Ridge Junction Baptist Church was founded at Dodds Avenue and Chamberlain Avenue in 1920.

Mission Junction was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913.

Missionary Ridge is both the name of the ridge extending from East Chattanooga southwest into Walker Co., Georgia, and a former municipality. The latter lay along the crest of the eponymous ridge and incorporated as the Taxing District of Mission Ridge in 1909.

The Battle of Tunnel Hill, Tn. and the Battle of Missionary Ridge were fought here on 25 November 1863, the latter ending the Siege of Chattanooga.

The Mission Ridge Incline Railroad ran through the community.

Missionary Ridge was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Montague Park lies south of the Belt Line to East 23rd Street between Polk Street and the line of Gulf Street, which did indeed once extend that far. As part of the suburb of Orange Grove, it was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913.

Mountain Junction, also known as South St. Elmo and Lookout Junction, lies between Forest Hills and Lookout Mountain from West 47th Street to the stateline. Its station was the junction of the Belt Line, Chattanooga Electric Railway, and the Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain Railroad. At the turn of the century, the community was known as Endline, after a station on the Chattanooga Southern Railway. In 1900, the population of Mountain Junction (as Endline) was 419.

The post office operated as Hustle in 1893, and as Mountain Junction 1893-1895. The post office of Endline operated 1897-1900.

Mountain Junction Station served the Mountain Division of the Union Railway and the Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railway as its valley terminus.

The southern part of the community hosted the Chattanooga Southern Railway (Tennessee-Alabama-Georgia Railway) stations of Endline (which TAG later changed to St. Elmo), Dickey, and Thurman’s Station from the Georgia state line to the last of these, which stood at the wye junction of the eastern and western arms of Union Railway’s Mountain Division with Chattanooga Southern/TAG.

From the late 19th century, Mountain Junction was served by St. Elmo School, 20th District, which eventually became South St. Elmo School. A couple of decades after North St. Elmo School became Louis Sanderson School, this school became St. Elmo Elementary, and in 1989 became one of the victims of the mass school closings that year.

The oldest church here was St. Elmo African Methodist Episcopal Church, which began life as St. Elmo Methodist Episcopal in 1883 and changed over in 1894. The oldest white church was St. Elmo Church of Christ, founded in 1913.

Mountain Junction became part of the Town of St. Elmo in 1911, and was annexed along with it into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Murray’s Field originally lay south of Montgomery Avenue (Main Street) to Chattanooga Creek and west of Carter Street to the Tennessee River. As such, it largely served as an unofficial commons in the late 19th century. As industry mushroomed in the early 20th century, the activities along with the name spread south of Chattanooga Creek, extending then entirely replacing the former location, north of Central Avenue (East 33rd Street), between Whiteside (South Broad) Street and the line of Long Street, taking up at least the northern half of the Portition of the Gillespie Estate (and perhaps all of it).

Early in the first decade, the privately-owned Washington Park took up a portion of Murray’s Field on Carter Street across from the end of Farmer (later Henry, then West 19th) Street, until closed by the police chief in November 1907. A large part of the reason for the complete shift of activity to the expansion south of Chattanooga Creek was to put it beyond the authority of the Chattanooga Police Department.

Along with some decent housing, the tenements of Hell’s Half Acre (Moyses Street) and Washington Park grew up in the shadow of the factories of the original Murray’s Field. In addition to Scholze Tannery, Chattanooga Saddlery, and Rabe Pipe & Foundry (at East End or Central Avenue, later East 33rd Street, where the Borough 33 Apartments are being built), the extended Murray’s Field hosted the tenements of Red Row (home of Ed Johnson) and Dudley Row. From the 1920s through the 1950s, Murray’s Field was also home to many games of the city’s quite large amateur baseball league, both whites and blacks.

Nashville Flats was an area from Academy/Star Fort/College Hill to the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, from which the moniker derived. N&C’s freight depot once stood in the northeast corner of the intersection of Boyce (South Chestnut) and Cravens (West 12th) Streets. The district frequently hosted circuses and other tent shows, and was also known as The Commons.

In later usage, the term was restricted to tenement housing of McCollum’s Subdivision, bound by Chestnut, Fort, West 11th, and West 12th Streets.

New England Park was a suburb that lay south of East 25th Street (Warwick Avenue) to East 28th Street (Dobbs Road) east of Orchard Knob Avenue and west of 4th Avenue. Its streets were all named for places in New England and its chief feature was a driving or racing track. In 1900, the population of New England Park was 101.

In the late 1910s, the area was resubdivided and renamed as Edgewood.

Edgewood Baptist Church, now on Ringgold Road in East Ridge since 2008, was founded here in 1923 at 2700 East 27th Street, an address now occupied by New Horizon Baptist Church.

New England Park/Edgewood was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Oak Grove sits north of the freeway stretches east from Holtzclaw Avenue to include both sides of Kelly Street to East Main Street, with subdivisions of Oak Grove Park, Ferger Place, Mindell Park, Elmwood, and Woodland Park.

Oak Grove Park subdivision proper lies south of East Main Street to East 23rd Street between Orchard Knob Avenue and Willow Street, but includes the campus of former Oak Grove School east of Willow Street.

Oak Grove School opened in 1913 and operated until the mass school closings of 1989 shut down Oak Grove Elementary. East Side Junior High School was established here in the 1920s; it fell victim to the mass school closings of 1989 but reopened the very next year as East Side Elementary School.

Oak Grove Baptist Church was founded here in 1911; Woodland Park Baptist Church was founded in 1914.

Oak Grove was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913.

Oak Hills (see Alton Park)

Oakland was the largest plantation in ante-bellum Hamilton County, owned by Daniel F. Cocke, who built his home atop Clifton Hill, its crest circled by Clifton Terrace. He sold it to Arthur Watkins, whose wife Anna was the daughter of George and Margaret McEwen Gillespie of the adjoining plantation across Chattanooga Creek. Arthur died in 1886, and Anna continued to live there until moving in with her daughter Alice Shields. By 1886, Oakland was owned by John C. Roberts, who subdivided it into the Clifton Hills suburb.

Old Boyce centered around the junction of Harrison Pike with the Western & Atlantic Railroad just west of the Chickamauga River before the Civil War. It hosted a depot, a mill, stores, and rivaled nearby Chickamauga in size and prestige. When Boyce Station was rebuilt after the war, it was nearly four-and-a-half miles down the line toward Chattanooga. Later the Western & Atlantic Railroad built King’s Bridge Station near the same place, named for the bridge on the Harrison Pike replacing Sivley Ford.

Kings Point Baptist Church was organized here in 1942.

The area was annexed to the City of Chattanooga in 1972.

Olympia Park (see Warner Park)

Onion Bottom, one of the several sections of the city also known as Hell’s Half Acre, lay between East 11th Street, Central Avenue, and the East End Yards. If you doubt it is bottom land, wait for the next gullywasher. In the early 20th century, it contained the city workhouse, a dump, a coal processing plant, and one of the largest and most notorious slums in the city, with a mixed, majority Afro-American population. Park Place Station of the Belt Line stood here through the first decade. Onion Bottom Baptist Church met here in at least the first two decades of the century.

Orange Grove suburb bordered the Chattanooga National Cemetery on its north to the Belt Line tracks south of Montgomery Avenue (Main Street) between East End (Central) Avenue and Holtzclaw Avenue. When annexed, the city included the area south to Missionary Avenue (East 23rd Street) between Central and Holtzclaw Avenues.

The National Cemetery Station in the northeast corner of the suburb served both the Orchard Knob Division and the Ridgedale Division of the Union Railway.

Orange Grove School at Montgomery Avenue (East Main Street) and Fagan Street was originally a regular public school from the late 19th century established in the suburb by the county. The city closed it in the 1940s, and the institution which is now Orange Grove Center took over the building when it was first established in 1953.

Orange Grove was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913.

Orchard Knob (geographic feature) is a huge hill in eastern Lower Chattanooga Valley that extends over far more area than the U.S. Reservation of that name of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, about a block out all the way around.

Orchard Knob was captured by the Union Army of the Cumberland from the Confederate Army of Tennessee on 23 November 1863. Gen. Ulysses S Grant directed Union forces from here during the Battle of Tunnel Hill, Tn. and the Battle of Missionary Ridge which took place on 25 November, the former a Confederate victory, the latter an unquestionable Union victory.

Orchard Knob (suburb), established in 1886, lies north of McCallie Avenue and south of East 3rd Street between Holtzclaw Avenue and North Lyerly Street. In 1900, the population of Orchard Knob was 254.

The post office of Orchard Knob operated 1888-1894 before moving to Highland Park.

Orchard Knob Station (originally Bald Knob Station) lay on the Orchard Knob Division of the Union Railway.

Orchard Knob School was first established in the late 19th century at Locust Street (Orchard Knob Avenue) and Clio Street, though now it faces what was Harrison Avenue and is now East 3rd Street. At the end of the 1904-1905 school year, nearby Churchville School was merged into Orchard Knob School under the latter’s name.

In the 1930s, the city closed Lincoln Junior High School (originally the county’s high school for black students) in Bushtown and transferred its grades to Orchard Knob School. By the late 1940s, the school became Orchard Knob Elementary and Junior High School. At the beginning of the 1961-1962 school year, the upper grades were separated to attend the new Orchard Knob Junior High (now Middle) which was built in Bushtown not far from its predecessor.

By far the oldest and most predominant church here is Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1887, at the time of its establishment serving people not just in Orchard Knob but in Highland Park, Bushtown, Churchville, Stanleyville, and Rosstown. Its first home was on Hawthorne Street between Harrison Avenue (East 3rd Street) and Garfield Avenue (Street). Around 1905, the church relocated to the corner of Harrison Avenue and Hawthorne Street, where it still stands and meets.

Two-thirds of the suburb was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1905; the remainder, which included Orchard Knob School and Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church, was annexed in 1925.

Pan Gap passes from Brown’s Valley in the east to Cash Canyon and the Tennessee River in the west, getting its name for the river obstruction known as The Pan.

Park City, one of the smaller Afro-American suburbs, is north of Doyle Street, along Cannon Avenue, all of it east of Rossville Boulevard.

Park City School opened for the 1933-1934 school year at 2608 Cannon Street (Avenue), and closed some time in the 1950s. The site is now Park City Park.

Its oldest religious institution was Church of God and Saints in Christ (an Afro-American Hebrew Israelite religious group), founded 1910. The oldest Christian church was Park City African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1917.

Park City was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Park Place originally lay from St. Charles (Flynn) Street and the East End Rail Yards beyond East 13th Street between Park Avenue and East End (Central) Avenue. It was a built for a mixed socioeconomic population; the cheaper housing from the south side of East 11th Street to the tracks later deteriorated into slums known as Onion Bottom.

During the Siege and Battles of Chattanooga and the Federal Military Occupation, Fort Palmer stood approximately where the school is.

Park Place Station, whose depot stood at the southwest corner of East 12th Street and Park Avenue, served all four divisions of the Union Railway.

Park Place School opened its doors in 1897, initially to relieve overcrowding at nearby First District School. It closed in the 1940s but reopened temporarily in the 1960s for grades 4 and 6.

Park Place Presbyterian Church U.S. opened in the late 1880s at the corner of East 10th Street and Park Avenue but closed during the Great Depression.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1869, before Park Place ever existed.

Pat Row, later “old” Pat Row, was the name given to the stretch of Market Street that formed the northern section of Stanton Town from the Western & Atlantic crossing and that of the Cincinnati Southern. According to local folklore, the name derived from the number of saloons each owned by a man with the first name Pat. The place was notorious enough to be a patrol beat for the city police. Later, the section of Market Street south of the CNO&TP crossing to Montgomery Avenue (Main Street) became known as the “new” Pat Row, also requiring its own police beat.

Pigeon Row was a tenement housing mostly Afro-Americans about four miles east of East End (Central) Avenue near Ridgedale.

Pine Knob sits south of East 3rd Street to Vine Street between Holtzclaw Avenue and North Holly Street.

Piney Woods lies south of Workman (Hooker-Hamill) Road between Hawkins Ridge and Chattanooga Creek, separated from South Alton Park by the tracks of the former Belt Line. The name derives from a housing development built in the late 1950s for Afro-Americans, and eventually spread across the district formerly called Black Bottom.

The city opened Emma Wheelers Homes in the northeast section of the area in 1964, in the area that used to be known as Black Bottom after the thick layer of coal tar in Chattanooga Creek.

Piney Woods Elementary School opened here in the early 1960s, primarily for the children of Emma Wheeler Homes, but fell victim to the mass school closings of 1989.

Piney Woods Baptist Church is the oldest church here.

The area that became Piney Woods was part of the City of Alton Park annexed with it into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Poeville, also known as Poeville Junction, was established by Squire William Poe (Squire being the title for members of the county court). It lay on either side of what is now West 55th Street from the end of Slayton Avenue to Blowing Springs Road (Tennessee Avenue), its only remains being Post Avenue and the sections of Sunnyside Avenue and Ansley Drive off West 55th Street.

When the Union Railway extended south from Oak Hills (Alton Park), the company established a depot here which also served as a junction with Chattanooga & Lookout Mountain Railway. By the late 1890s, it had ceased to have much significance.

Burnt Mill Place, the point where the road of that name crosses Chattanooga Creek and which was once a popular venue for recreation, fishing, and old style baptisms, was considered to be within Poeville.

The post office of Poeville operated here 1883-1891.

Raccoon Mountain is the detached northern section of Sand Mountain that defines Brown’s Valley, the southern or left bank of the Tennessee River Gorge (Cash Canyon), separated from its larger neighbor to the south by Running Water Valley.

Radcliff (see East End)

Red Row was a tenement that lay south of Scholze’s Tannery at 3001 St. Elmo Avenue, on either side of East End (Central) Avenue (East 33rd Street) and Whiteside (South Broad) Street, best known as the home of lynching victim Ed Johnson.

Reservoir Hill, also known as Hawk Hill, is a spur of Cameron Hill that is almost a separate height. During the Civil War, it hosted one of the Army of the Cumberland’s redoubts, and post-bellum the town’s first water reservoir, thus its name. In the 20th century it was the home for the football field of Kirkman Technical High School (for which it is also known as Kirkman Hill), and in the 21st century for the stadium of the Chattanooga Lookouts.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and Federal Military Occupation, Fort Carpenter stood atop the hill.

Ridgedale lies adjacent to the Ridge between the freeway and Kirby Avenue, originally to Buckley Street, though after the boundary of Highland Park was placed at Lyerly Street when annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1905, its western boundary extended there. In 1900, the population of Ridgedale was 980.

The post office of Ridgedale operated 1887-1903.

Ridgedale hosted three stations on the Ridgedale Division of the Union Railway: Ridgedale Junction, which connected the Union Railway to the Missionary Ridge Incline Railway; Ridgedale Station, at Montgomery Avenue (East Main Street) and Buckley Street; and Smith Street Station, at what is now Standard Catoosa Thatcher Building.

Ridgedale School opened in the late 19th century. In 1902, it became one of six county schools to host a high school program. Its upper grades were transferred to Central High in 1907. The rest of the school continued until being shut as Ridgedale Elementary School in the mass school closings of 1989.

After annexation, another institution called Open Air School operated here for several years, but closed by the late 1920s.

From 1907 to 1963, Ridgedale hosted the county Central High School on Dodds Avenue, after which the school moved to Harrison.

The oldest church in Ridgedale was Westminster Presbyterian Church U.S., founded in 1883.

Ridgedale Methodist Church, which became the community’s most prominent, was founded in 1888; as Ridgedale UMC, it consolidated with St. James Methodist in 1994 as East Ridge UMC, and its former building now hosts First Baptist Church of Bozentown.

Ridgedale Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church formed in 1886 and consolidated with East Brainerd Methodist in 1961 to become St. Paul’s Methodist, which merged with Shallowford Road Methodist to become Christ United Methodist in 1994.

Ridgedale was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1913.

Riverside (see Cash Canyon)

Riverside Park was a post-World War II development between Riverside Drive on the east and a side-track of the Belt Line on the west south of Latta Street.

Rockeye was the vicinity of the point where the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad and later Southern Railway crossed over the tracks of the Cincinnati Southern Railway and the Western & Atlantic Railroad, directly across from Rubio Street. The term “rockeye” is an archaic reference to such a crossing of different rail lines which do not junction. By the 1910s, the Citico Rockeye became a “hobo jungle” or homeless encampment, lasting at least through the Great Depression. It later became a city dump until 1948, when the city closed it and the other open dumps on East 23rd Street, Central Avenue off Rossville Boulevard, Hamill (Workman) Road, and St. Elmo, and centralized its garbage disposal at Montague Park, where it buried the refuse.

Roger’s Row was a tenement neighborhood in St. Elmo.

Ross’ Landing (see Chattanooga)

Rosstown once lay north of McCallie Avenue between Derby and Lyerly Streets up to East 5th Street. At one time it was populous and prosperous enough to sponsor a baseball team in the city’s local Negro League. In 1900, the population of Rosstown was 145.

Though relatively tiny, in addition to a baseball team, the community hosted St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1906.

Parkridge Hospital now occupies a good deal of the former suburb, much of it standing on the grounds of the former Frawley Stadium of Central High School, and only two small of its original blocks remain.

Rosstown was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Rossville, Tennessee was the original name of a suburb that was renamed after annexation.

The post office of Rossville in the Cherokee Nation moved from the John Ross House at the modern eponymous town to Joseph Coody’s on the Federal Road (the old Daniel Ross place where Calvin Donelson School now stands) in what is now Hamilton County in 1827, and in 1834 to Brainerd Mission, where it was thenceforth called Brainerd.

For information on the community, see Cedar Hill.

Rustville was south of Chattanooga Creek and west of Alton Park Boulevard north of Doak (37th) Street to Central Avenue (33rd Street), west to Southern Railway to include Calvin Donaldson School and east over Alton Park Boulevard to include the grounds of the former Spencer-McCallie Homes. The planned development originally included the area now known as Hooterville.

Rustville was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

St. Elmo lies between Hawkins’ Ridge and Lookout Mountain north of West 47th Street, though nowadays its southern border is extended to the state line to include the forgotten community of Mountain Junction. Often called, mistakenly, the oldest suburb of Chattanooga (an honor which actually belongs to Citico City), it began life as Eastside, but was renamed after a novel based there. The population of St. Elmo in 1900 was 2,305.

The Town of St. Elmo incorporated in 1911. Its boundaries were, roughly, Wauhatchie Pike in the north, the Lookout Mountain Reservation of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, the Tennessee-Georgia state line, and the line of the crest of Hawkins Ridge, to include all of Forest Hills Cemetery.

The area was a major refuge for residents of Chattanooga fleeing the city during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878, when out of the population of 11,000 only 2,000 remained.

The post office operated as St. Elmo 1888-1898, postal service being transferred from Kirklin.

The community hosted St. Elmo Station on the Mountain Division of the Union Railway, which was more commonly known as the 5th Street Depot because of its location at the southwest corner of the intersection of St. Elmo’s 5th Street (now West 43rd Street) and Virginia Avenue.

A spur track led to Lookout Point Railroad depot at the foot of Lookout Mountain, connecting Union Railway with Incline No. 1. Nearby, the later Lookout Mountain and Lula Lake Railway, commonly known as Incline No. 2 and surviving today as Lookout Mountain Incline Railway, built (and still has) its depot at the base of the mountain.

St. Elmo School on what’s now W. 37th Street and St. Elmo School (Colored) on what’s now W. 38th Street both opened their doors in the 1890s, though not simultaneously.

In 1910, St. Elmo School became North St. Elmo School; just before annexation, it became Louis Sanderson School. It was combined with South St. Elmo School in the 1960s as St. Elmo Elementary School, which survived until the mass school closings of 1989.

Early in the 20th century, St. Elmo School (Colored) grew in student body size when Wauhatchie School (Colored) was merged into it. After annexation, St. Elmo School (Colored) received both a new name, Calvin Donaldson School, along with a new building and location on Hooker Road in Alton Park.

The county opened Lookout Junior High School here in 1922 to serve both the Town of St. Elmo and the City of Alton Park, as it continued to do after those areas were annexed. The school closed when the last graduating class left at the end of the 1973-1974 school, and the building became the home for the administration of the Chattanooga City Schools system.

The oldest church here is St. Elmo Avenue Baptist Church, founded as St. Elmo Baptist in 1878, which merged into Silverdale Baptist Church in 2015. The oldest surviving church is St. Elmo United Methodist, founded as St. Elmo Methodist in 1883.

The community’s oldest black church was Patten Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded 1886. The oldest surviving black church is St. Elmo Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1890.

St. Elmo was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

Sam Houston Park was a one-block city park bound by Ann (West 22nd) Street, Cowart Street, West Missionary Avenue (West 23rd Street), and Whiteside (South Broad) Street obliterated during the construction of Interstate 24.

Scruggstown was the residential area for Afro-Americans that sprang up after the War east of the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (later Southern Railway) along Branham (East 9th) Street that lasted into the 20th century and formed the basis for the community that later supported The Big Nine, including East 8th, East 10th, and East 11th Streets.

During the Siege of Chattanooga and Federal Military Occupation, two of Battery Erwin’s three fortifications stood at what later became Scruggstown and The Big Nine, one at East 8th Street and Mabel Street and one at East MLK Boulevard and Peeples Street.

Howard School moved to Branham (East 9th) and A (Lindsay) Streets in 1871 and stayed until the fall of 1883, when it opened in its new facility at Gilmer (East 8th) and D (Douglass) Streets as Howard High School. The presence of Howard was a major draw. In 1904, the school moved again, this time to Gillespie (East 11th) and A (Lindsay) Streets, where it remained until moving to College Hill-Westside in 1921.

Gilmer Street School began in the lower floor of the Howard facility on the street of the same name, and when Howard moved, it did to, becoming Gillespie Street School then Eleventh Street School.

In the late 1920s, Joseph E. Smith School opened at East 10th and Peeples Streets, replacing Eleventh Street School and operating until the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Chattanooga National Medical College, one of just eight such facilities training black doctors at that time, operated 1898-1908. Its office was on Gilmer (East 8th) Street.

Walden Hospital opened its doors on Gilmer, later East 8th, Street in 1915, and served Afro-American patients through 1952.

Walden Nursing School held classes at Walden Hospital from 1925 to 1945.

Chattanooga City College began life as Zion Baptist Institute in 1942, becoming Zion College in 1949 and finally CCC in 1964. It merged with University of Chattanooga in 1969 to become the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

The oldest and hands-down most influential church in the community for decades was First Baptist Church, founded as Shiloh Baptist in 1866 by Union veterans on the corner of Gilmer (East 8th) and C (Mabel) Streets. Its past and faithfulness to its message have kept it among the leaders.

First Congregational Church arose at the western outskirts of the community on Branham (East 9th) and A (Lindsay) Streets in 1867.

Thompkins Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at Flynn and Palmetto Streets was founded in 1875.

St. Mary the Virgin Protestant Episcopal Church organized in 1916 and built a small facility on East 8th Street a block down the street from First Baptist.

Of the later churches, by far the largest and most influential is Olivet Baptist Church, founded 1921 on East 9th Street (MLK Boulevard).

Shallowford Gap is the low place on Missionary Ridge through which Shallowford and Brid’s Mill Roads pass. One of the engagements in the days after the Battle of the Chickamauga (Battle of Mud Flats) was fought here.

Sherman Heights was a prestigious suburb of the late 1880s that sprang up north of Crutchfield Street and east of Dodson Avenue, extending up onto the foot of Missionary Ridge to the east. It was more or less the same area as the currently-designated Glass Farm District. The suburb’s Glass Street was Chattanooga’s first paved street. Sherman Heights became part of the Town of East Chattanooga after 1917. In 1900, the population of Sherman Heights was 1,190.

Before the war, the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad had a stop here named Glass Station that was destroyed in the Battle of Tunnel Hill, Tn. on 25 November 1863, which was really the early part of the Battle of Missionary Ridge. After the war, East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad established a platform stop called Tunnel, then Arno briefly. After citizens of the community built a really nice depot, the station became a schedule stop named Sherman Heights. When Southern Railway opened a new depot 1914 to replace the one burned down the year before, they named it East Chattanooga in 1914.

Its post office operated as Mission Ridge 1884-1888, then as Sherman Heights 1888-1905. Local RFD service started out of this post office in 1901, moving to East Chattanooga Station of Chattanooga P.O. in 1905.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sherman Heights School and Sherman Heights School (Colored) served the children of the community as well as those of Boyce. By 1911, both had adopted the name East Chattanooga, the first at 2800 Dodson Avenue and the second at 2416 Dodson Avenue.

The oldest church at Sherman Heights in 1942 was Rock Island Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1873.

The oldest white church was a combined congregation of members of three Methodist denominations that began meeting together around 1875.

In 1880, one group left to form St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church South, which later moved south to become Avondale Methodist Episcopal South; Avondale MES reverted to the name St. John’s MES in 1940. In 1947, St. John’s MES merged with Grace Methodist Episcopal to become Avondale Methodist, which relocated to Bonny Oaks under the name Lake Vista United Methodist in 1967.

In 1887, Sherman Heights Methodist Episcopal Church, South split off from the original congregation, later becoming Manker Memorial ME. The third and remaining group formed King Memorial Methodist Church in 1889. In 1959, King Memorial and Manker Memorial consolidated as East Chattanooga UMC

Finally, East Chattanooga UMC merged with Lake Vista UMC into St. John’s UMC, located to Murray Hills, in 1991, bringing back together the three separate churches of the original combined group.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga along with the rest of the former Town of East Chattanooga in 1925.

Sherman Hill once stood west of H.L. Judd Curtain Pole factory south of the confluence of the Chickamauga and Tennessee Rivers, and the base of it is still there.

Sherwood Forest lies along both sides of Wood Avenue and Riverside Drive from Wilder Street to Wisdom Street. Sherwood Forest was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1968.

Sherman Hill Baptist Church at Wilder Street and Riverside Drive is the reincarnation of Sherman Hill Church of Christ which relocated here from the former Curtain Pole community after the H.L. Judd Factory closed.

South Africa was a tenement section of West Side on Grove Street.

South Alton Park, also known at various times as East St. Elmo, Arlington, and Poeville, includes the area along Central Avenue south of and including West 51st Street, separated from the southwestern section of Piney Woods by the former tracks of the Belt Line.

The post office of Poeville operated in the vicinity 1883-1891.

Arlington Station served both the Union Railway and Chattanooga Southern (Tennessee-Alabama-Georgia) Railway. Thurman’s Junction stood at the southwestern edge of the neighborhood and Doty’s Junction at its northern edge, both of which also served both railways.

The area became part of the City of Alton Park in 1917, was annexed along with it into the City of Chattanooga in 1929.

South Chattanooga originally equated to the Fifth Ward of the City of Chattanooga after 1869. This took in everything south of Montgomery Avenue (Main Street) to Chattanooga Avenue (West & East 28th Street) from East End (Central) Avenue west to the Tennessee River.

Fifth Ward (later Third District) School opened here in two rooms rented from White Street Methodist Church in 1873. It later moved to its own building at Williams and John (West 21st) Streets, where it continued until closing in the 1940s.

The oldest church here was Broad Street Methodist Church, founded in 1871 as Whiteside Street Methodist. There was also a South Chattanooga Methodist Episcopal Church founded 1889. The oldest black church was Mount Paran Missionary Baptist Church, founded 1879, now in Eastdale.

The area from Montgomery Avenue (Main Street) to Missionary Avenue (West & East 23rd Street) was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1851; the area from Missionary Avenue to Chattanooga Avenue came along in 1869.

South Highland Park is that part of the suburb as annexed in 1905 that was not part of the Town of Highland Park, the part south of Anderson Avenue to East Main Street from Holtzclaw Avenue to Lyerly Avenue. The community considered itself distinct enough in the early 20th century to have its own business league.

The city opened Hemlock School at Montague Avenue (East 12th Street) and Ruoh’s Crossing in 1911. Hemlock Elementary closed in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

South St. Elmo (see Mountain Junction)

Stanleytown, sometimes rendered as Stanleyville, was a historically black community north of Blackford Street and south of Citico Avenue between what are now North Willow Street and Arlington Avenue that eventually got swallowed up by Churchville. It was coextensive with (Charles) Stanley’s Subdivision.

The post office of Orchard, the name of which was originally intended to be East Churchville, operated here 1894-1895.

Stanleytown depot served the Orchard Knob Division of the Union Railway until its name was changed to Churchville.

There was a Stanleytown School until the end of the 1890s, when it was absorbed into Churchville School.

The oldest church here was and still is Stanley Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1886.

The area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

Stanton Town was intended by entrepeneur John C. Stanton, president of Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad (later Alabama Great Southern Railway, or AGS), to become the new business and prestigious residence center of Chattanooga. He moved here in 1869 to run AGS and built the luxurious Lookout House hotel (later known as Stanton House) on the later site of Terminal Station, along with a new post office where the St. Johns Hotel now stands, across Market Street from what was then the A&C depot, plus an opera house. Roughly, it ran from West 12th-Houston Street to Montgomery Avenue (Main Street), but it went bust when he went bankrupt in 1871. The name hung on until he left the area in 1880. See also Pat Row.

Stillhouse Hollow was the gulch between Reservoir Hill and Cameron Hill proper, filled by dirt from the top of the latter to support I-124, which is now US 27.

Stone Fort Hill was the rocky knob which hosted Fort Jones, also known as Stone Fort, built by the Army of the Cumberland during the War of the Rebellion. It reached higher than the Old Post Office (now the Customs House), and spread from Market Street to King Street, between Branham (East 9th) Street (now East MLK Boulevard) and the Western & Atlantic Railroad. It was levelled in 1904.

Suburba was the southern portion of what later became Glenwood, so-called after the station on the Mission Ridge Incline Railway and later Chattanooga Electric Railway. After the suburb of Glenwood was created, the stop was renamed McCallie Avenue. In 1900, the population of Suburba was 52.

Suburba proper lay south of Oak Street to McCallie Avenue and east of Glenwood Avenue to Shallowford Road, including Oak Place.

The post office of Suburba operated 1885-1901.

The area became part of Glenwood, which was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1922.

Summertown was the name of the community atop the northern tip of Lookout Mountain until it incorporated in 1891.

Sutler Row, also known as Sutler Town, was the district authorized for sutlers, civilian vendors, by Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman, Commanding Officer of the Post of Chattanooga (later the District of the Etowah) of the Department of the Cumberland in 1864 out the outset of the Federal Military Occupation during the War of the Rebellion. Originally, the district was confined to Chestnut Street from James (West 9th) Street to the Fort lot next to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and back along Pine Street. It later spread down into the Nashville Flats along Carter Street, and after the war became the city’s red light district. It was purchased by developers in 1874, demolished, and rebuilt by mid-1875, by which time it was no longer Sutler Row or Sutler Town.

Tadetown was the residential area for Afro-Americans that sprang up after the Civil War in the shadow of Fort Creighton (established as Fort Wood) and lasted until well into the 20th century, north of McCallie Avenue to Harrison Avenue (East 3rd Street), from ETV&G (Southern Railway) to East End (Central) Avenue. After Fort Wood Addition took over most of it, the name continued to be used for the Afro-American section.

Tannery Flats was a collection of tenements that was originally company housing for the workers of the Chattanooga Tannery, which once stood along the river west of Cameron Hill. It lay south of where Mill (West 6th) Street (now West MLK Boulevard) came over the hill. Of its four or five small blocks, only Ash Street remains. During the heyday of Roane Iron, this was where the middle management lived.

The oldest church here was First St. James Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church, founded in 1889.

Tenderloin, from the 1880s until 1911, occupied the area from Carter to Penelope Streets between James (West 9th) and Leonard (West 10th) Streets, with spillover across to the north side of West 9th Street from Poplar Street to Chestnut Street. Reportedly after that, the brothel owners moved to the vicinity of East 9th and Douglas Streets.

Terrace Hill was the southern end of Cameron Hill, next in status to Cameron Hill proper as a neighborhood, with slightly less prestigious homes on East Terrace and West Terrace (later Boynton Terrace).

During the Siege of Chattanooga and the Federal Military Occupation in the War of the Rebellion, Fort Crutchfield (originally Fort Sheridan) stood where Boynton Towers are now.

Physically, Terrace Hill was made of two distinct knobs, which in the early 20th century became better known as Boynton Hill (north of West 11th) and Irish Hill (south of West 11th). The latter was almost entirely razed for fill dirt for the Big Scramble interchange of I-124 at East 23rd Street. Its base remains but it is now indistinguishable as a separate spur from its northern neighbor Boynton Hill.

Tiftonia is the middle section of of the greater Lookout Valley community. John Tift, who named it for himself, built what he intended to be a town on several hundred acres of what had been the Parker Farm. It mostly lies south of Kelly’s Ferry Road and west of Wauhatchie Pike, though it spreads a little north of the first. Tiftonia was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1972.

Tincup Alley was a tenement section south from East 10th Street through East 11th Street to Foundry Street a block south (no longer extant), later renamed as an extension of Foster Street.

Tinker’s Junction was a community in the late 1880s through about 1905 also known as Tinker’s Station. It was the southern terminus of Burgess Switch connecting Chattanooga Union Railway to Burgess Station on the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (later Southern Railway). It was absorbed into Avondale around 1905.

Trueblood Hill is the northernmost hill of Missionary Ridge, called Tunnel Hill in the military records of both armies during the Civil War.

Tunnel (see Sherman Heights)

University of Chattanooga began life as Chattanooga University in 1886, then served as a campus of Athens-based Grant Memorial University in 1889, before uniting with Normal University to become University of Chattanooga in 1907. It originally occupied only the block bound by McCallie Avenue and Douglas, Oak, and Baldwin Streets. Even that it shared first Central Junior High School (not the same as the later school), then the First District Public School, then the second Chattanooga Public Library (now UTC’s Fletcher Hall). It acquired the block between Douglas and Baldwin to Vine Street at an early date, most of which was later taken up by Chamberlain Field (football). Today it takes up nearly two-thirds of the entire East Side. Formerly all-white, UC integrated by merging with Chattanooga City College in 1969 to become University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and has expanded to include half of the entire East Side.

Warner Park began life as Olympia Park in 1894, provide a racetrack and viewing stands for horse and horse-and-cart races. The city bought the park in 1912 and renamed it Warner Park after Commissioner Joseph Warner. It grew to 48 acres which included a swimming pool, amusement park, bowling alley, and horse riding. From 1916 until the 1950s, its half-mile racetrack hosted automobile races. Within Central Avenue, East 3rd Street, Holtzclaw Avenue, and McCallie Avenue, the park currently hosts six ballfields, a swimming pool, a fitness center, a recycling center, picnic areas, and the Chattanooga Zoo, founded as Warner Zoo in 1937.

Washington Park was the name of three separate recreation sites for Afro-Americans in the first decade of the 20th century. Washington Park No. 1 lay on the Sherman Heights Line of the Chattanooga Electric Railway and was prominent and well-maintained enough to serve as the site of Negro League games and Labor Day festivals put on by the city’s black labor unions. Washington Park No. 2 lay in the original Murray’s Field on Carter Street at the end of Farmer (East 19th) Street; it was closed by order of the Chattanooga police chief in November 1907. Washington Park No. 3 was in or near Mountain Junction (South St. Elmo). Washington Park was also the name of a tenement which grew up in the vicinity of the park closed in 1907, and later, out of the city miles to the east, of a subdivision developed for Afro-Americans adjacent to Chickamauga or Shepherd.

Wauhatchie is the southern section of Lookout Valley, deriving its name from the railroad station Wauhatchie Junction of the Nashville & Chattanooga (also Memphis & Charleston) Railroad with Wills Valley Railroad. The name, however, has been used from a wide area, including all of the modern community of Lookout Valley, as well as northern Dade County, Georgia, where a post office of Wauhatchie, Georgia, operated 1840-1856.

The post office of Wauhatchie, Tennessee, operated 1866-1918

Wauhatchie was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1995.

West Chickamauga Creek springs forth in the head of McLemore Cove in Walker County, Georgia, and confluences with South Chickamauga Creek just north of Camp Jordan Park.

West Side, geographically, included Cameron Hill and the area beyond and the residential area between West MLK Boulevard (once West 9th Street) and West Main Street (once Montgomery Avenue), from the river in the west to the Union Yards in the east.

As a neighborhood in the city, Westside, or College Hill as the neighborhood was more commonly known until the mid-20th century, took in the spur called College Hill along with the adjacent flats east to Broad Street from West 9th Street and south to West Main Street, excluding Terrace Hill, Cameron Hill, Tannery Flats, and Blue Goose Hollow.

During the post-bellum Second Industrial Revolution, the entire West Side was owned by the Roane Iron Company, then by the Chattanooga Land, Coal, Iron, and Railway Company. The Roane Iron Works served as the centerpiece and main source of jobs in the manufacturing district west of Cameron Hill. When the iron works closed due to being unable to compete with modernized techniques adopted by northern factories, the works shut down, and so did much of the West Side. From being a mostly working class district, it became a center of poverty.

Most of College Hill, or Westside, was destroyed by the Golden Gateway urban renewal or “Negro removal” project of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Displaced persons relocated to the new Spencer McCallie Homes specifically built for that purpose, which were in turn demolished in the 21st century, only this time with no provision for its residents to relocate. The neighborhood remains as the College Hill Courts, or Westside projects; until being demolished to make way for Finley Stadium, one small street of row-houses had also survived the earlier eradication.

The 497-unit College Hill Courts, blacks-only until desegregation, were constructed by the city in 1941.

By far the most important school in Westside was Howard School, at Carter and West 10th Streets since 1921 after moving from Gilmer (East 8th Street) and Douglas Street. It moved to its current location bordering Hooterville on its east in 1954.

The predominant church in College Hill/Westside was Second Missionary Baptist Church, first organized as Wauhatchie Missionary Baptist in October 1866. It moved to a house in Blue Goose Hollow in the late 1879s before opening its building on Leonard Street as Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist at College Hill (Westside) in 1880, with its third pastor changing the church to its present name. It remained in Westside until 1975, moving that year to East 3rd Street. The next oldest and second in influence was Leonard Street Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. was founded in 1888.

From 1945 until it was destroyed in the Golden Gateway project, Westside hosted George Washington Carver Memorial Hospital on West 9th Street.

Westside and its neighbors were annexed into the Town of Chattanooga in 1851.

White City sits west of Jerome Avenue, south of East 32nd Street, and includes everything to Chattanooga Creek.

White City was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1925.

White’s Hill was a tenement section along Chattanooga Avenue and the southern ends of Long, Williams, Cowart, and Carr Streets in the last two decades of the 19th century and first two decades of the 20th century that took an upturn in 1920 to become a middle-class neighborhood.

Whiteside Flats was a sub-section of the West Side comprised of cheaper rental housing between James (West 9th) Street and Leonard (West 10th) from Carter Street to Burch Street (no longer extant, but entering West 9th Street opposite Cypress Street), roughly six blocks.

Woodland Park lies south of East Main Street to East 23rd Street, east of Montague Park to Ferger Place and Elmwood.

Notes from the Ninth Circle

11 January 2017

South Hamilton Co. TN communities and placenames

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