Greater East Chattanooga

This article is dedicated to my good friend Cora Lanier, one of the founders of the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association.

That name East Chattanooga was already being used as the designation, at least colloquially, of an area in the vicinity of Chattanooga dating as early as 1877.  That much is clear from mentions in newspaper articles, though the precise area to which that refers is not clear.

East Chattanooga is one of those historic names all too often used in a less than precise manner, like Ooltewah, Hixson, East Brainerd, or South Chattanooga.  Usually when locals use the name, they’re referring to everything north of McCallie Avenue to Chickamauga River between the DeButts Yards and Missionary Ridge.  Sometimes they even include Ridgedale, Fort Cheatham, and East Lake.

The differences between what the Boyce Station and the Glass Farm Neighborhood Associations define East Chattanooga as (with their combined areas) and what the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission define East Chattanooga as demonstrate the fluidity of such definitions of locality.  Both of those include far less territory than the Town of East Chattanooga of the early 20th century.  The main point upon which most broader definitions of East Chattanooga its their inclusion of Avodale within it.

A large part of this may have had to do with local post offices being discontinued and their service funneled to the East Chattanooga Station of the Chattanooga Post Office.  In 1907, the clerk-in-charge there, D.M. Raulston, complained of getting mail addressed to “Boyce, Jersey, Bartlebaugh, McCarty Station, Burgess Station, Sherman Heights, and Avondale” when it should have been addressed to “East Chattanooga Station, Chattanooga, Tenn.”

By 1916, no less a personality than Judge Lewis Shepherd did not know the difference, and he’d lived in the city more than his family home of Altamede in Hickory Valley (halfway between Concord and Tyner).  In an article for the Sunday, 4 June, edition of the Chattanooga Times that year called “Hamilton County Towns, Villages, and Localities and Queer Facts About Origin of Their Names”, Judge Shepherd lumped Amnicola, Boyce, Sherman Heights, East Chattanooga, and Avondale together as if they were a single entity.

By the 1920s, the various railroad companies whose tracks traversed this part of the county considered a very broad area to be East Chattanooga, including lands as far as the Citico Yards and the suburb of Citico City, better known nowadays as Lincoln Park.  For instance, a short biographical piece in an industry trade journal of this period refers to the subject being a switchman at “Citico, East Chattanooga”. 

From 1869 until it began waves of annexations in the early 20th century, the city limits were the river, 23rd Street on the southwest, and East End (Central Avenue) on the southeast.  So, all the northern part of the county south of the Tennessee River and west of Chickamauga River but east of Central Avenue (and north of McCallie Avenue) was considered East Chattanooga. 

So, while I’d intended to confine discussion of the topic to the actual Town of East Chattanooga and its forerunners, history is forcing me to take a broader approach.  In addition to including the various communities of Greater East Chattanooga, I’ll also describe a few that fall outside even that broader definition but are peripheral and connected through various forms of intercourse, such as Citico City/Lincoln Park, Toqua, King’s Point, and McCarty, plus Bozentown, Sherwood Forest, and Riverside Park.

RAILROADS

Before I get into the history of the name and the community of East Chattanooga, and of Avondale and the so-called black hamlets to the south (Bushtown, Churchville, Stanleyville, Rosstown, and Orchard Knob), let’s take a look at the railroads which cross the area.

Western & Atlantic Railroad, 1850

The Western & Atlantic Railroad gave birth to Atlanta and other towns and spearheaded the making of Chattanooga into the great railroad center it became.  The Chattanooga to Tunnelsville section was completed in 1849, with service beginning the same year.  Chetoogeta Tunnel was finished, track laid, and the two lines (the other being from Atlanta to the far side of Chetooga Mountain) joined in 1850.

As part of the U.S. Military Rail Roads during the Civil War, the railway was known as the Chattanooga and Atlanta Railroad.

When the the W&A’s lease with Georgia ran out in 1890, the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway (NC&StL) obtained the rights to the railway, giving them a complete line from Atlanta to Nashville.  The NC&StL’s nickname was the “Dixie Flyer”.

In 1957, the NC&StL merged with the Louisville & Nashville (L&N) Railroad.  In 1982, the L&N itself merged into the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad as part of the Seaboard System Railroad, which merged with the Chessie System to become CSX Transportation in 1986.

These were the stations of the W&A/NC&StL in the East Chattanooga area.

Chickamauga Junction

After the end of the Chattanooga Campaign, Union engineers built a junction of the W&A and the ET&G just west of Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek) which cut ten miles out of the W&A’s mileage.  From the junction, the Chattanooga and Atlanta Railroad of the U.S. Military Railroads ran on the tracks of the Chattanooga and Knoxville Railroad (formerly ET&G) through Whiteside Tunnel into town.  After the war, the two railways returned to their original routes, with the ET&G building an overpass bridge above the W&A.  The junction nevertheless remained a station into the 20th century.

McCarty Station

Serving both the NC&STL and the SOU, this signal stop stood where Allied Metal now operates on Lightfoot Mill Road in a diamond formed by the tracks of the former (now part of Tennessee Valley Railway) and of the latter.  The depot’s location was approximately the same as that of Chickamauga Junction.  CSX Railroad still has a presence there.

Old Boyce

The original antebellum Boyce Station stood five miles below the later site, at the Harrison Pike crossing just east of Sivley Ford through South Chickamauga Creek.  Both the depot and the village around it were destroyed during the war, and the community dispersed.  

Kings Bridge

In the late 19th century, the W&A established a signal station at about the same point where the original Boyce Station stood before the war.  They named it Kings Bridge after the eponymous bridge which now crossed the creek at Sivley Ford at the same site where the Harrison Pike bridge crosses the river now.

Boyce/Amnicola

The first postbellum Boyce Station depot was established in 1870 and stood at the north end of Sims Street.  With the Cincinnati Southern Railway (CS) about to arrive, the depot moved a half-mile south in 1879 to its final location just west of the tracks and north of the line of Wilder Street.  From 1880 to 1884, the depot (now belonging to Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway, NC&StL) bore the name Amnicola, then reverted to Boyce.  From 1880 to 1881, it shared the depot with the Cincinnati Southern Railway until the City of Cincinnati leased the CS to the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway (CNO&TP), which built its own depot. 

In 1892, the CNO&TP dismantled, removed, and rebuilt its depot in Whitely, Kentucky, and returned to sharing that of its neighbor.  In 1894, Southern Railway (SOU), into which controlled CNO&TP, built a much more sumptuous facility at the site for the railroads to share.  It burned in 1912 and was rebuilt in 1913.  NC&StL ceased using Boyce for passenger service in the early 1930s; SOU followed suit in 1938.

Chattanooga Extension Railroad, 1859

More commonly known locally as the Chattanooga & Cleveland Railroad, this official name for the line connecting the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad (ET&G) to Chattanooga from its Cleveland Station on its primary Knoxville to Dalton line, junctioning at the later location with the W&A to connect to Atlanta. 

The ET&G named the passageway through Missionary Ridge the Whiteside Tunnel after James Whiteside of Chattanooga, one of its directors and one of the town’s early leaders.  Its other major feat locally was its deep-cut through Brabson Hill on what’s now UTC campus, traces of which can still be seen.  The new section opened for traffic in 1859.  For the first few decades of its existence, it appeared in industry timetables as the Chattanooga Branch Railroad of ET&G.

As part of the U.S. Military Rail Roads during the Civil War, this section formed part of the Chattanooga and Knoxville Railroad.

The ET&G and the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad (Knoxville to Bristol) consolidated in 1869 to form the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad (ETV&G).  The ETV&G Railroad was reorganized as the ETV&G Railway 1886.  This company consolidated with the Richmond and Danville Railroad as Southern Railway (SOU) in 1894.  In 1982, SOU merged with Norfolk & Western Railway to form Norfolk-Southern Railway (NS), operating under that name since.

These were the stations of the ETV&G/SOU in the East Chattanooga area.

Chickamauga Junction

See the entry for this station under the Western & Atlantic Railroad.

McCarty Station

See the entry for this station under the Western & Atlantic Railroad.

East Chattanooga

Before and during the Civil War, the stop was called Glass Station.  After the war, the ETV&G had a station north of the tracks inside the loop that now connects Awtry Street to Arno Street, called Tunnel.  The residents built a depot themselves, the railroad sent out an agent, and it became a schedule stop in 1886.  In 1888, the ETV&G renamed the station  Sherman Heights when the community adopted a new name.  After this depot burned in 1913, SOU built a replacement east of the tracks and south of Crutchfield Street named it East Chattanooga  at almost the same site of the Tennessee Valley Railroad’s own station of this name.

Burgess Station

This signal stop stood at the Dodson Avenue crossing of the railway, near the intersection of the former with Ruby Street.  

Citico Junction

The junction of this railroad with the Belt Line and the Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railway, its name derived from the nearby Citico Furnace next to the eponymous creek.  The Citico Yards developed here largely because of the furnace, and later in the 20th century became the modern DeButts Yards.

Cincinnati Southern Railway, 1880

The Cincinnati Southern Railway to Chattanooga opened in 1880, reaching its intended southern terminus.  The following year, the City of Cincinnati leased the line to the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway (CNO&TP), owned by the Baron Frederic Emile d’Erlanger, who also owned the Alabama Great Southern Railway (AGS) and built the hospital named for his wife, Baroness Marguerite Mathilde Slidell d’Erlanger. 

In 1883, the CNO&TP was one of the five railroads Baron d’Erlanger organized into the Queen and Crescent Route.  Southern Railway (SOU) acquired CNO&TP in 1895, though it continued as a separate entity, as it does now under Norfolk-Southern Railway (NS).  The City of Cincinnati still owns the entire physical line from there to Chattanooga.

The train engine that inspired the song “Chattanooga Choo Choo” worked Cincinnati Southern Railway (which is still the name of the physical railway regardless of which company operates on it).  It was an old wood-burner of the 2-6-0 Mogul type, an example of which can be seen at the Choo Choo Hilton downtown.

King’s Point

The CNO&TP established a signal stop here and built a depot at the end of North Wilder Road that it operated until at least the beginning of the 20th century.  In the middle 20th century, the railway established another station near here called Hulsey.

Amnicola/Boyce

When the Cincinnati Southern Railway (CS) arrived in 1880, it shared Amnicola depot with the W&A.  After the CNO&TP leased the CS in 1881 and built its own depot named Boyce, the name of W&A’s Amnicola until 1880.  This the railroad operated until 1892, when it dismantled, transferred, and reassembled it at Whitely, Kentucky, after which it returned to sharing the neighboring depot of the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway (NC&StL), which had replaced the W&A.

Winters Spur

Halfway between Boyce and Citico, this signal stop serviced a spur to the Citico Brick Factory.

Avondale

Near the Holtzclaw-Citico  crossroads at its junction with the latter railway, the CNO&TP shared a depot here with the Belt Line in the far southwest corner of the eponymous suburb.

Citico

Separate from the Citico Junction station of the ETV&G/SOU and the Belt Line, this was CNO&TP’s depot at the head of its tracks for its section of the Citico Yards.

Belt Line, 1886

Chattanooga had had streetcars in its downtown and to some of its nearer suburbs since 1875; however, all these lines were horse-powered.

In 1986, C.E. James began building the Belt Line around Chattanooga, a standard gauge railway hauled by steam dummy engine which outwardly looked like passenger cars.  Later, the line switched to small Forney locomotives.  Its first line began operating to East Lake via Radcliff (in the northern part of East End) in 1987; its line into Sherman Heights (and soon into Boyce) began operating in August 1889. 

In the beginning, the railway operated from the Chestnut Street Depot (which actually stood on Fort Street).  Later James moved operations to the Newby Street Depot on the corner of what’s now East 10th Street, which still stands and serves the Alexian Brothers.  Finally, he built the Georgia Avenue Depot where the Federal Building now sits.

The Belt Line operated four passenger lines, or divisions (its freight routes, of course, were much more extensive), with the line through Orchard Knob, the black hamlets, Avondale, Sherman Heights, and Boyce referred to as the Orchard Knob Division.  It operated out of the Georgia Avenue Depot along with the Ridgedale Division, while the Radcliff and Mountain Divisions operated out of Newby Street Depot.

The company which ran this railroad was Union Railway Company from August 1883 to June 1888; Chattanooga Union Railway from June 1888 to April 1891; Chattanooga Terminal & Suburban Railway from April 1891 to September 1891; and Chattanooga Union Railway Company from September 1891 to September 1895. 

In 1895, the Belt Railway Company of Chattanooga took over and began to electrify all the lines in direct competition with Chattanooga Electric Railway.  The Belt Railway Co. went into receivership in 1898 and the physical railway was purchased by AGS, which in turn leased it to the Rapid Transit Company that same year.  RTC continued to operate the Belt Line as an electric streetcar line into the early 20th century, minus the Radcliff Division.

Much of the old Belt Line is gone.  One line still operates, however, the East Chattanooga Belt Railway, still under AGS, but for freight only.

At its peak, the Belt Line had thirty-seven small depots on its passenger routes.  These are the stations on the Orchard Knob Division.

Park Place

This depot stood in the southwest corner of the intersection of Fairview Avenue and East 12th Street.

National Cemetery

This depot stood in the southeastern corner of the National Cemetery, occupying part of the space where Mid-South Mattress stands at 1265 East 13th Street.  At that time, the cemetery took up only the central portion of its present extent, the surrounding land serving as Jackson Park.  The depot was actually at the northeastern tip of the suburb of Orange Grove.

Cedar Grove 

Listed as a community of 109 residents in the Chattanooga City Directory of 1900, this community had a depot between National Cemetery and Orchard Knob and is on the schedule for the Orchard Knob Division.  It was, perhaps, the name for the community west of Holtzclaw Avenue between Olympia/Warner Park and the National Cemetery.

*Avondale

From the National Cemetery, the Belt Line proceeded north along what’s now Holtclaw Avenue with the main line of Orchard Knob Division turning east at Vine Street.  Here, a spur line branched off, ultimately junctioning with the ETV&G/SOU just east of its Citico Yards after crossing the W&A and the CS.  This spur later became part of the Belt Line’s Citico Division when it operated purely as a short-haul freight railroad.  On this spur lay an Avondale depot shared with the CNO&TP, almost certainly a signal stop, near the Holtzclaw Avenue-Citico Avenue crossroads and its junction with the other railroad.

*Citico Junction

This was a station at the junction of the Belt Line with the ETV&G that became the foundation for the Citico, now Debutts, Yards.  The station is gone but it remains a point on the railway.

Bald Knob/Orchard Knob

Renamed Orchard Knob after the creation of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park in 1890, this station stood north of the Orchard Knob Avenue crossing.

Indian Springs

The depot here, primarily to provide access to what was a popular recreational site, was located at the Harrison Avenue (now East 3rd Street) crossing.

Stanleyville/Churchville

This depot was located at the current intersection of Cleveland Avenue and Dodson Avenue, the original terminus of this line at the time it was initially built.  It soon extended to Sherman Heights then to Boyce.  After RTC took over, they renamed this station Churchville.

Tinker’s Junction

The depot stood at intersection of Bradt Street and Wilcox Boulevard (once named Tinker Street at this point); there was a side-track to the northwest.

Jefferson

This depot stood roughly at the intersection of Gilbert Street with Arlington Street.

Sherman Heights

This depot was at northeast corner of the junction of the Belt Line with the ETV&G at the Wheeler Avenue crossing.

Boyce

The Belt Line used the long haul railroads’ depot here in the early years of the Orchard Knob Division’s operations after it extended its tracks from Sherman Heights to Boyce.  When the Union Railway of Chattanooga was first operating the Belt Line it crossed both sets of tracks of the two long-distance railroads and formed a siding on the northwest side of the depot.  Later, the Belt Line stopped east of the W&A tracks on Roanoke Avenue just above Wilder Street.

Tunnel-Chattanooga plug train, 1886

Around the same time that the residents of Tunnel got together and built a depot to replace the platform at Tunnel Station, they also made a deal with the yardmaster at Citico for him to run what’s called a plug-train ferrying passengers to and from Chattanooga, with a trip in the morning and another in the evening.

A plug train was an ad hoc service run over the tracks of a long-haul railroad pulled by a switcher locomotive making strictly local runs, often with more stops.  These operated on railroads in the country as early as the 1850s, but the practice died off as steam dummy railroads and streetcars took over.

This plug train ran from Tunnel (Sherman Heights) to Union Station, almost certainly stopping at Citico Junction Station and perhaps at Burgess Station, until the extension of the Belt Line into the neighborhood in August 1889 made this form of transport no longer necessary.

Chattanooga Electric Railway, 1889

Chattanooga Electric Railroad’s first streetcars began running 1 July 1889, and within a month the company had purchased both the Forney locomotive-powered Missionary Ridge Incline Railroad and the horse-powered Chattanooga Street Railroad.  The company electrified the first almost immediately and the second more gradually as it was composed of several lines.  For about a year-and-a-half, Chattanooga had local street railways powered by horse, by steam, and by electricity.

The line into Sherman Heights (and eventually into Boyce) opened in August 1891, called the Sherman Heights and Boyce Street Line when it reached its full extent.  Unlike the Belt Line, the trolleys of the Chattanooga Electric Railway did not have actual depots, but it did have more stops, much like modern bus lines.  It is also much easier to trace their routes since trolleys were literally streetcars, as opposed to the Belt Line, which ran over private rights-of-way.  The path of the Sherman Heights and Boyce Street Line ran thus:

Heading out from Martin Luther King Boulevard (then *Ninth Street) and Market Street, the trolleys of this line traveled east on MLK to Georgia Avenue; up Georgia to East 4th Street; down East 4th to East 3rd Street (Harrison Avenue); east along E. 3rd until Roanoke Street (Divine St.); north on Roanoke until Ocoee Street (Jefferson St.); east on Ocoee until North Chamberlain Avenue; north on N. Chamberlain to Stuart Street; west on Stuart to Roanoke Street (Beck St. this time); north on Roanoke until its terminus across the W&A from Boyce Station.

*The stretch of Ninth Street between Cherry and Chestnut Streets, the section originally named James Street in the early days of the town, did not have East or West designations unlike the sections extending beyond Georgia Avenue to the east and Chestnut Street to the west.  Those designations (East and West) for today’s MLK Blvd. both start at Market Street.

Chattanooga Railways Company (CRC), 1906, and further

Formed to take over from the insolvent Belt Railway Company, the Rapid Transit Company (RTC) leased all the former routes of the Belt Line from AGS, operating them as electric trolleys.  All, that is, except the Radcliff Division, which it discontinued (a bit of a shame, really, since the Ratcliff Division was the first line of the railway).  In 1900, though, it extended its Ridgedale Division all the way to Chickamauga Park.

In 1906, RTC acquired the Chattanooga Electric Railway and joined it, Northside Consolidated Railway (which operated two lines north of the Tennessee River and which RTC had owned since 1900), Chattanooga Street Railway, and City Street Railway together as Chattanooga Railways Company.  This meant that the electric trolley lines of the formerly competing companies serving East Chattanooga and associated suburbs were now under one roof.

This changed in 1909, however, when CRC became the Chattanooga Railway and Light Company (CRLC), and it dropped the three remaining routes of the Belt Line, including the Sherman Heights-Boyce Division (that of the former Chattanooga Electric Railway continued for another four decades, however).  From 1919 to 1922, the streetcars operated as Chattanooga Street Railway Lines until taken over by Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO).  In September 1941, TEPCO was taken over by Southern Coach Lines, which began gradually converting its electric streecars to gasoline-powered buses.

BEFORE THE EUROPEANS

On the right bank of the Chickamauga River at its confluence with the Tennessee River was a Late Woodland period (500-1000 CE) burial mound ceremonial complex called the Bell Place site by early 20th century archaeologist Clarence B. Moore.  During the Woodland period, such sites were used only for ceremonies and not inhabited.  There was one mound somewhat intact, conventionally known to archaeologists as the Bell Place Mound, plus the remains of several others that had been plowed down.

During the Middle Mississippian period (1200-1400), the town at Citico on the right/east side of the eponymous creek was the overwhelming dominant force in the Chattanooga country, with its suzerainty far into East Tennessee, North Georgia, and Northeast Alabama.  This period was the same in which the chiefdom at the Etowah Mounds site was at its peak.  This town was not palisaded and was spread out over a great distance, with many what might be called suburbs.  Its primary platform mound was around 28 feet high at its peak and at its base was 145 feet long by 110 feet wide.  In addition, there were two smaller platform mounds nearby.

About 1350, the society which supported the chiefdom at Citico collapsed and its precincts deserted, to remain vacant until the terminal phase of the Late Mississippian period. 

Citico’s reoccupation in the twilight years of the Late Dallas Phase was not nearly so grand, a palisaded village on the former town site.  Its people and those of sister sites at Audubon Acres, Hampton Place on Moccasin Point, and Williams Island belonged to a group called the Napochi, of which the Hampton Place town was the chief.  In 1560, the Napochi were targets of a joint campaign by the then paramount Coosa chiefdom and the Spanish expedition of Tristan de Luna, and later joined the Upper Creek (where they were reported by French trader Charles Levasseur in 1700).

The vicinity of the Bell Place site was occupied during the Revolutionary War from late 1776-1782 by the militant Cherokee following Dragging Canoe.  Its inhabitants named their settlement Toqua after the town they’d left on the Little Tennessee River.  It was abandoned in the general evacuation of Chickamauga towns in 1782 but subsequently resettled after the wars ended after that Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in 1794 and the Treaty of Greeneville in 1795.

During the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee from the Ocoee District (Bradley and Polk Cos., Hamilton and Marion Cos. south of the Tennessee, part of Monroe Co.), a few hundred were interned in Camp Clanewaugh at Indian Springs (near Memorial Hospital) while some twenty-five hundred were interned at Camp Cherokee where UTC’s Scrappy Moore Field is now.

AFTER THE REMOVAL, BEFORE THE WAR

Even before the Cherokee were rounded up and interned at Camp Cherokee and Indian Springs, surveyors hired by the State of Georgia were working in that part of the Ocoee District which became Hamilton County.   Led by Col. Stephen Long of the Army Corps of Engineers, their task was to choose the best route for the Western & Atlantic Railroad from a point on the Chattahoochee River (that which ultimately became Atlanta) to a point on the Tennessee River which would then be the northern terminus of the railroad.  The crossing point over the Georgia State Line had already been chosen.

After Long and his team discarded the county seat of Harrison as an option, they chose a spot on the Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek) as a point from which to plot five possible routes to three potential northern termini.  That landmark was called Kenan’s Mills, and it stood in the vicinity of the later Lightfoot Mill.

While hindsight may make Ross’ Landing the obvious choice, Long and his team chose the mouth of Chickamauga River rather than the future Chattanooga as the ideal terminus (the third potential site was Gardenhire’s Landing).  Hard lobbying by residents of the latter site combined with the fact that the owner of the land Long had chosen (Thomas Crutchfield, Sr.) also favored Ross’ Landing, however, caused the Georgia legislature to set aside Long’s recommendation.

The Western & Atlantic was constructed into two sections, the first from Atlanta north to Chetooga Mountain and the second from Chattanooga south to Tunnelsville (now Tunnel Hill).  Those sections were completed in 1849 and began running trains between their separate termini.  A year later the W&A completed its tunnel through the mountain and the railroad was finally complete from Atlanta to Chattanooga.

Toqua

This community extended for some distance south and east from the confluence of the Chickamauga and Tennessee Rivers.

Toqua had been one of the settlements of Dragging Canoe’s militant Cherokee when they occupied the Hamilton County area late 1776-1782, and, like Old Chickamauga Town (across the river of that name from the later Brainerd Mission), had been reoccupied after the Cherokee-American Wars (1775-1795) ended.  Indeed, several entries in the Cherokee emigration rolls after the New Echota Treaty of 1835 list Toqua as the residence.

After the Removal, incoming settlers retained the name Toqua for the vicinity.  In 1838, a couple of months after the foundation of Good Springs (later Tyner) Baptist Church, several people met at the Sivley home to organize Chickamauga (now Oakwood) Baptist Church.

A post office named Toqua operated here 1843-1844, probably out of the home of Absalom Sivley, near Sivley (later Taliaferro) Springs on what’s now TVA property south of the Chickamauga Dam.  After the Civil War, a Sivley P.O. operated 1878-1880 before changing its name to Toqua until 1884, when it was discontinued and service moved to Harrison.

When John D. King moved to the neighborhood in 1860, he established a huge farm stretching south to Chattanooga-Cleveland Pike (now Bonny Oaks Drive) and called it Toqua.  The name King’s Point later overtook the name Toqua.

Old Boyce and the coming of the W&A

The first railroad to connect to Chattanooga bypassed the area of East Chattanooga proper entirely, in terms of stations at least, but it did include the forerunner of one of its two communities.  In fact, it created that forerunner and was the reason for its existence.

This first Boyce community, often called Old Boyce by local historians, grew up around the first Boyce depot on the Western & Atlantic Railroad.  This first Boyce Station, named for Samuel J. Boyce (son of Chattanooga founding father Ker Boyce), stood on the left bank (south side) of Chickamauga River just north of  where Harrison Turnpike crossed it by way of Sivley Ford.  A thriving village soon grew up nearby with water-powered grist, flour, and saw mills, and a general store.  There was a school, the Massengale School.  The Chickamauga Baptist Church moved here in 1856.

Samuel Boyce’s farm took in some 800 acres of the later East Chattanooga, his house nestled in a hollow in the north side of Billy Goat Hill, facing Chickamauga River.  The house stood until burning to the ground in 1898.  The tract took in the land south of Chickamauga River to Billy Goat Hill, the hill itself, and the district later known as Boyce’s Addition.

Glass’ farm and the coming of the ET&G

The first railroad to include a station inside the later East Chattanooga proper was the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad, in its branch officially known as the Chattanooga Extension Railroad.  That station, almost certainly a signal stop, was Glass Station.  The station was located not far beyond the western end of Whiteside Tunnel.

The proprietor of Glass’ farm was hardly a simple farmer.  The farm was the country residence of John G. Glass, one of the initial land speculators of the Ocoee District and a founder of the town of Chattanooga.  Among other ventures, he was president of Union Bank in town, owner of Chattanooga Hotel until he sold it to R.S. Stuart in 1848, a trustee of Chattanooga Seminary, and a trustee of Mutual Insurance Company of Chattanooga.  Seven streets in the original South Chattanooga were once named for members of his family (they still exist but have long since been renamed), in addition to Glass Street in East Chattanooga.  He was around at least for the early Federal Military Occupation because he purchased the home of Dr. Milo Smith in town in the year 1864 and was recorded doing business with the Union provost marshal.

CIVIL WAR YEARS

East Chattanooga remained largely unaffected by the war until the autumn of 1863.  Even during the Siege of Chattanooga (21 September-25 November 1863), most of what became East Chattanooga was untouched, except for being denuded of trees.

Engagement at Boyce Station, 22 September 1863

In this case, the depot in question was at Old Boyce, the original location of Boyce Station at Sivley’s Ford of Harrison Pike across Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek).

In the aftermath of the Battle of the Chickamauga (Battle of Mud Flats to the Confederates), Col. George Dick’s 2nd Brigade of Brig. Gen. Horation Van Cleve’s Third Division of Maj. Gen. Thomas Crittenden’s XXI Corps of the Union Army of the Cumberland held the passage between Lowery’s Hill and the Chickamauga River against pursuit by Confederate forces, with the 59th Ohio Volunteer Infantry as the main engaging force.

The opposing Confederate unit was Col. John S. Scott’s Brigade of Brig. Gen. John Pegram’s Division of Forrest’s Cavalry Corps.

Battle of Orchard Knob, 23 November 1863

The Battle of Orchard Knob on 23 November changed all that, not that it was much of a battle.  Some 14,000 troops from the divisions of generals Wood, Sheridan, and Howard advanced from Fort Wood on the Confederate position atop Orchard Knob.  The mere 600 defenders of the 28th Alabama Infantry fired a few volleys then beat a hasty retreat.  The other anchors of the Confederate skirmish line at Indian Hill (Highland Park) and Brushy Knob (National Cemetery) were also abandoned along with the skirmish line itself.

It was not until the loss of Orchard Knob and the rest of the skirmish line that Gen. Braxton Bragg, general commanding of the Army of Tennessee, gave orders to begin fortifying Missionary Ridge.  This task he detailed to Maj. Gen. John Breckenridge, who not only had the men dig rifle pits on the crest but on the valley floor along the base of the ridge.

Prior to the loss of the skirmish line, the main body of the Army of Tennessee occupied just the floor of the Chattanooga Valley from the bench of Lookout Mountain across the valley to the base of Missionary Ridge, then north along the base in a line that didn’t come close to reaching the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad.  To the west, the line reached over the bench to guard Brown’s Ferry, Wauhatchie, and part in between.  Longstreet’s Corps held the right, Hardee’s Corps held the right, and Breckenridge’s Corps held the center.  The crests of both Lookout Mountain and of Missionary Ridge remained vacant throughout almost the entire siege.

Maj. Gen. John Breckenridge did have a redoubt guarding his headquarters in the center of his corps, which made it the center of the Confederate line.  Later Chattanoogans mistook this for that of another general and hence gave it the name of another Confederate general, Fort Cheatham, when it should have been Fort Breckenridge.  That the suburb named Fort Cheatham was Afro-American is not without irony.  But the redoubt did exist and there were other local suburbs named for such things, for example Fort Wood and Fort Negley. 

The latter of those two (Fort Negley or Fort Phelps) is, in fact, the actual Fort Cheatham, as is clear from Union dispatches, particularly from early in the Siege of Chattanooga.  When the Union Army of the Cumberland retreated to Chattanooga after their disastrous defeat at Mud Flats (Battle of the Chickamauga), they reoccupied fortifications already built by the Army of Tennessee during its own occupation of the town and its environs.

The next day, 24 November, was the Battle of Lookout Mountain, fought between Stevenson’s Division of the Army of Tennessee and Hooker’s command from the Army of the Potomac.

Battle of Tunnel Hill, Tn., 25 November 1863

What most people don’t know about the military engagement between Union and Confederate forces here on 25 November 1863 is that it included two virtually separate battles.  Most popular accounts of the Battle of Missionary Ridge begin with the decision by Thomas and Grant at Fort Wood to charge the center of the Confederate line on Missionary Ridge about 3:45 pm.  But the fighting that day began further to the north, centered on what to locals was known as Trueblood Hill, the spur of the ridge north of Whiteside Tunnel for which both armies called it Tunnel Hill.

The evening of the 23rd, the troops of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s 15th Corps of the Army of the Tennessee (minus the 1st Division under Brig. Gen. Peter Osterhaus) crossed the Tennessee River in secret at Brown’s Ferry.  After camping at what’s now Whiteoak Cemetery, the corps proceeded east until coming to the river across from the Amnicola farm owned by Tom Crutchfield.  Here, they crossed the Tennessee River by boat. 

In the afternoon of the 24th, supported by the 4th Division of the 14th Corps of the Army of the Cumberland under Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis and the 1st Brigade of the 2nd Division of the 11th Corps of the Army of the Potomac under Col. Adolphus Bushbeck, Sherman’s command ascended Billy Goat Hill from its north side and began digging in and erecting fortifications in the mistaken belief that it was the northern point of Missionary Ridge.  Billy Goat Hill is actually separated from the ridge by Fords Gap.

When word arrived at Gen. Braxton Bragg’s headquarters of the Army of Tennessee, he immediately dispatched orders to Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne, whose division was then at Tyner Station waiting to depart east aboard the train to support the forces under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet besieging Knoxville, to return and defend his right flank.  Cleburne’s Division arrived in time to prevent the seizure of the entire hill, though its notthernmost tip had already been seized by the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Division of the 15th Corps under Col. Joseph Cockerill, which managed to hold it throughout the fighting the next day.

From 9:00 am to about 4:00 pm, troops of Sherman’s 15th Corps of the Union Army of the Tennessee, Davis’ 4th Division of the Army of the Cumberland, and Howard’s Corps of the Army of the Potomac repeatedly attacked the position held by Cleburne’s Division.  Of that  division, only Smith’s/Granbury’s Texas Brigade and Swett’s Mississippi Battery were directly engaged with the main attacking forces, with direct support of the Orphan Brigade.  Govan’s Brigade was held in reserve, Lowery’s Brigade guarded the road to Chickamauga River, and Polk’s Brigade was stationed on a hill on the right bank of that river.  The division was later augmented by Cummings’ and Brown’s Brigades of Stevenson’s Division, Maney’s Brigade of Walker’s Division, and Lewis’ Kentucky Orphan Brigade of Breckenridge’s Division, only to be repulsed every time. 

As the battle was about to begin, Lt. Gen. William Hardee, commander of the Confederate right wing, had Brig. Gen. Alfred Cummings of Stevenson’s Division send the 39th and 56th Georgia Infantry regiments down to the flats to seize and hold the Glass farm buildings, or to torch them if they had to retreat.  They did seize and attempt to hold the farm but had to retreat, firing the buildings as they did.  Union officers later reported members of the Glass family hiding in the house’s basement (three women, several children, a number of dogs) fleeing the burning house and safely escaping the battleground.

Later in the afternoon, Sherman’s forces shifted their focus began attacking the ridge in the near vicinity of Whiteside Tunnel.  Finally, at about 4 pm, Hardee ordered an assault against the attacking forces by Cumming’s and Brown’s Brigades of Breckenridge’s Division and Maney’s Brigade of Walker’s Division, supported by Calvert’s Battery.  This counterattack was highly successful, driving the Union troops from the field.  Cleburne’s “Blue Flag Division” carried the victory of  “Tunnel Hill, Tn.” on its banners the remainder of the war.

Battle of Missionary Ridge, 25 November 1863

At 2:30 pm, Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant of the Military Division of the Mississippi began to worry about his friend Sherman and began casting about for ways to relieve the pressure.  What he ultimately decided on was an assault against the trenches at the base of Missionary Ridge, Gen. Braxton Bragg of the Army of Tennessee for some reason having approved this rather bizarre arrangement recommended by Maj. Gen. John Breckenridge.  It was supposed to be a feint to get Bragg to shift some of his forces from his right, and he gave the task to Maj. Gen. George Thomas’ Army of the Cumberland, who advanced beginning at 3:45 pm.

Having captured the rifle pits on the valley floor, the Union soldiers found themselves under a withering barrage of rifle and cannon fire, and charged without orders attempting to evade it.  So, about 5pm, just as Hardee’s troops were sitting down to a victory dinner, Hazen’s and Willich’s brigades of Woods’ division poured over the crest of the ridge at the position held by Tucker’s Brigade of Bate’s Division at the point Bird’s Mill Road crossed it. 

Coinciding with this, Hooker’s command, which had been impeded by having to build pontoon bridges to cross Chattanooga Creek, finally made it to Ross’ Gap and began attacking the Confederate left.

Hardee’s wing covered the retreat, with Cleburne’s command covering the rear of the rear.

Doctrine of the “military crest”

Many amateur military scientists and commentators condemn Bragg for his placement of the rifle pits atop Missionary Ridge along the actual crest rather than the “military crest”, which is “an area on the forward or reverse slope of a hill or ridge just below the topographical crest from which maximum observation and direct fire covering the slope down to the base of the hill or ridge can be obtained”.

While Bragg’s deserves to be condemned from many, many of his actions and non-actions (such as waiting until after the fall of Orchard Knob and the skirmish line to fortify Missionary Ridge at all), in fact, Breckenridge, with Bragg’s approval, instructed the rifle pits—Civil War terms for trenches—to be placed where standard military practice of the time dictated: along the actual or topographical crest. 

When Sherman’s command dug in atop Billy Goat Hill they did the same, as remains of the trenches there demonstrate.  What’s more, that is exactly where Cleburne instructed his men to place their initial rifle pits on Tunnel Hill (the northern portion of Missionary Ridge which they were defending).  At the time, Cleburne thought his troops would be facing an attack from the west rather than the north.  When they discovered otherwise after Sherman’s combined force appeared over the crest of Billy Goat Hill, he had his men dig rifle pits perpendicular to the crest.

That said, at least one Confederate general was thinking more analytically.  Brig. Gen. Arthur Manigault of Anderson’s (Hindman’s) Division tried to convince Bragg’s chief engineer, Captain John Green, to use what later came to be called the military crest, but Green assured him the actual crest was what Breckenridge wanted. 

Manigault chose to ignore that and had his men dig in according to his preference.  As a result, his brigade held their positions and the charging Union troops avoided them.  However, the brigades of Tucker and Deas to either side of him had followed Green’s instructions to the letter and were broken, so Manigault had to withdraw his men to keep from being surrounded.

Given that not only Bragg and Breckenridge but also Sherman and Cleburne placed their rifle pits along the topographical rather than the military crest, I submit that such was the standard practice at the time and, furthermore, that it was the Battle of Missionary Ridge itself which led to formulation of the doctrine of the military crest. 

There’s plenty to throw stones at Braxton Bragg about over the Battle of Missionary Ridge and in the weeks leading up to it without relocating a military doctrine in the spacetime continuum in order to pontificate about a violation of it during its prexistence.

Under Federal Military Occupation

All railroads within captured Confederate territories became part of the U.S. Military Railroads, thus the Western &Atlantic became the Chattanooga and Atlanta Railroad and the Chattanooga Extension Railroad of the ET&G became the Chattanooga and Knoxville Railroad. 

The schoolhouse and depot were destroyed during the fighting in 1863.

Locally, the Union army engineers constructed a junction just west of Chickamauga River of those two railways, cutting out ten miles of travel time for the first of these, as well as bypassing Old Boyce and its station.  With its raison d’etre removed, there was little incentive to rebuild or to reoccupy anything that was left even had they been allowed to do so.  Thus, the original Boyce came to an end.

Postbellum, some of the residents of Old Boyce revived their community briefly under the name Flint Hill on the right bank of the river near the T-junction of Lightfoot Mill and Youngstown Roads.  The school was named Flint Hill, and Chickamauga Baptist Church, formerly of Old Boyce, met in it.  The school burned and the community dissipated in 1888.  Some of those at Flint Hill either before or after made their way to the postbellum community of Boyce that had grown up around the reestablished station.

POSTBELLUM YEARS

The Western & Atlantic and the East Tennessee & Georgia were not released from the U.S. Military Railroads system until 1866, along with the rest of the network, and it took some time for both (and the rest of those which served the region) to get back to normal running.

The (re)birth of (New) Boyce

Samuel J. Boyce petitioned for and received a pardon from the Union provost at the Post of Chattanooga in the waning months of the Federal Military Occupation in 1866, and remained in Hamilton County postbellum.

In 1870, the Western & Atlantic  reestablished Boyce Station but did so four-and-a-half miles above its previous location, roughly at the intersection of Curtis and Sims Streets.  This depot was small enough that after it ceased service as such it was used as a home.  It was, though, a schedule stop with an agent and later became a coupon station (which in long-haul rail passenger service is a big deal).  As with its predecessor, a small community grew in the neighborhood of the depot, though this lacked the mills made possible by easy access to a river.

Testifying to the early presence of Afro-Americans in East Chattanooga, Rock Island Missionary Baptist Church began at what is now 2104 Farleigh Street in 1873.  Now simply Rock Island Baptist, the church is at 2016 Camden Street in Avondale.

In 1877, Samuel Boyce died at his large home in the northern hollow of Billy Goat Hill.  The southern portion of his lands was alloted for residential and small business settlement in a section known as Boyce Addition, which included almost all the land south of Sims Street between the Western & Atlantic and North Chamberlain Avenue.  The northern portion eventually came into the hands of one John Dada and either after his death or insolvency was subdivided by Hamilton Co. Court.

In 1879, Thomas Crutchfield conceived a plan to divide his large farm between the Tennessee River and the W&A Railroad as the township of Amnicola.  The development got as far as dividing the proposed town into residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, and school lots, but no further.  It did, however, serve as a precursor to the later designs of the East Chattanooga Land Company.

The small rural community around the depot grew and some of it did organize as the (unincorporated) Town of Boyce, its original limits being Cushman Street in the south and Elmendorf Street in the north between the railroad and Dodson Avenue (some sources extend the eastern boundary to Taylor Street).    It is thus marked out on contemporary maps, such as those in the Plat Book of the City of Chattanooga published by G.M. Hopkins Co., as the “Original Town of Boyce”.

The community’s Boyce School occupied the southwest corner of the North Chamberlain and Wilder Street crossroads.  Boyce Colored School for Afro-American children (public education being strictly segregated) stood at 2410 Dodson Avenue.

Its sole railroad depot, Boyce, served the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway (which replace the Western & Atlantic), the Cincinnati Southern, and the Belt Line (until it was electrified) railroads.  The part of the former Boyce Addition north of Elmendorf Street to Sims Street from the railroads to Billy Goat Hill was later developed as Sherman Park Addition.

In anticipation of the coming of Cincinnati Southern Railway (CS), the Boyce depot moved from its Sim Street location one half-mile in toward town, just west of the W&A tracks running parallel to Railroad Street (Sholar Avenue) and just north of the line of Wilder Street.  The first southbound train of the Cincinnati Southern to pull into Boyce Station on its way to Chattanooga, which had been dubbed the “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” as it left Cincinnati, arrived on 8 March 1880.

Initially CS shared the tracks of the W&A from Boyce to Union Station, but the board members in Cincinnati soon voted to build their own line into town, though they continued to share Boyce Station.  In 1880, the NC&StL renamed the shared station to Amnicola, which it remained until 1884, when it reverted to Boyce. 

Meanwhile, in 1881, the City of Cincinnati, which owned (and still owns) the CS railway, leased it to the Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railroad.  The CNO&TP built its own depot station adjacent to that of the NC&StL, named to Boyce.  The CNO&TP operated their depot until dismantling, removing, and reassembling it at Whitely, Kentucky, in 1892, after which it shared the Boyce depot of its neighbor once again.

In practice, though, Amnicola remained a destination for not only the NC&StL but also the CNO&TP until the end of the century, largely because the local post office operated under that name for eight years in the 1880s.

A post office was established at the depot as Boyce Junction on 24 September 1879.  When Thomas Crutchfield, Jr. became its postmaster that 29 October, he changed the name to Amnicola.  On 8 August 1880, it was changed back to Boyce, but less than three weeks later it returned to Amnicola on 24 August.  There it remained for more than eight years, returning to be Boyce once again in 29 August 1888, which it remained until December 1889.

The first store at Boyce was opened by James Squires in 1884. 

Mission Ridge Baptist Church, the earliest church for whites in Boyce/East Chattanooga I’ve been able to find, was established at Dodson Avenue and Wilder Street in 1888.  In 1889, they met in Boyce School at Wilder Street and North Chamberlain Avenue.  In 1891, the congregation moved into its own building at 2901 Taylor Street and changed their name to East Chattanooga Baptist.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of East Chattanooga (Boyce) in 1900 was 642.

The birth of Sherman Heights

In 1869, the East Tennessee & Georgia consolidated with the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad to become the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad, or ETV&G.  Some time after, the railroad established a signal stop, just a platform, near the western mouth of Whiteside Tunnel called “Tunnel Station”.

Much of the immediate area remained part of the Glass farm until 1883, when some of it began to be divided into lots and developed into subdivisions or “additions”.  The area had long been known as Tunnel, and in 1884 the residents apparently reaffirmed that name.  However, when they petitioned the postal service for an office that year, it was named Mission Ridge.

In 1886, the residents of Tunnel got together and built a depot to replace the platform at Tunnel Station, and in response the ETV&G put an agent there and put the station on the schedule.  It was at around the same time that the residents made a deal with the yardmaster at Citico for him to run what’s called a plug-train ferrying passengers to and from Chattanooga, with a trip in the morning and another in the evening.

A plug train was a usually ad hoc service run over the tracks of a long-haul railroad pulled by a switcher locomotive making strictly local runs, often with more stops.  These operated on railroads in the country as early as the 1850s, but the practice died off as steam dummy railroads and streetcars took over.

Two years later in 1888, the residents met again about the name of their community, and by a large margin decided on Sherman Heights.  The name of the ETV&G station and the local post office adopted that name the same year.  A dissident faction tried to claim the vote had been for the name Arno, but it never caught on.

It was at this time that serious efforts to establish a national military park at Chickamauga and Chattanooga first began, which had much to do with the choice of name.  For balance, the residents named the premiere three-story guest house of the community Hotel Cleburne.

Also in 1888, the Belt Line (then operated by Chattanooga Union Railway) arrived, with a depot bearing the new name of the community at its junction with the ETV&G.  This was actually a little south of the boundary of Sherman Heights, the suburb whose name it bore, but not too far.

The residents of Sherman Heights voted to incorporate under their chosen name in 1892, with the Hotel Cleburne ceasing business as such to become the civic center of the town.  This probably meant they became a taxing district, like the “town” of East Chattanooga then was. 

The Sherman Heights School was certainly established by this time, if not much earlier, and stood at Dodson Avenue and Cushman Street.  Boyce Colored School had become Sherman Heights Colored School.

After the turn of the century, the signal stop of Burgess Station on the Southern Railway stood further in toward the City of Chattanooga at the crossing of Dodson Avenue over the railroad, near its intersection with Ruby Street.

Methodists in the vicinity began meeting in a log building in late 1865.  Members of all three major Methodist denominations met together.  Their building burned down in 1872 and they met at the home of one Andrew Williams until 1875, when they built a structure on Dodson Avenue in Avondale., which ultimately became St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church.

The first division came when St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church split off from  the multi-denominational congregation, moving into its own building at Grace and Taylor Streets in 1875.

In 1887, the Southern faction also broke away and began holding services at a separate building at Glass and Campbell Streets as Sherman Heights Methodist Episcopal Church, South.  Because it met in what used to be a home, it was nicknamed “The Cottage Church”.  In 1901, this congregation renamed themselves Manker Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South.  Meanwhile, adherents of the third Methodist denomination established themselves as King Memorial Methodist Church at Farleigh and Taylor Streets in 1889. 

In 1959, Manker Memorial and King Memorial Methodist merged as East Chattanooga United Methodist Church, staying in the building of the former at 2625 North Chamberlain Avenue.  The East Chattanooga church merged into St. John’s United Methodist Church in Murray Hills in 1991.  Its former building now houses New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church.

Avondale is the name here of both a suburb and of a subdivision.  The latter is in the suburb of Sherman Heights, south of Crutchfield Street between Dodson Avenue and North Chamberlain Avenue.  Its south boundaries are two: first, the tracks of the ETV&G/SOU, and second, Lockwood Auto Center, which in the early 1880s was the J.J. Bragg Bauxite Quarry.

On 2 September 1901, Rural Free Delivery service started out of Sherman Heights P.O., which probably handled the load for East Chattanooga and Avondale as well.

Glass Street, the main thoroughfare of Sherman Heights, was the very first street paved in the region, even before any if the streets in the City of Chattanooga.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Sherman Heights in 1900 was 1,190.

East Chattanooga Land Company

The primary goal of the ECLC, launched in the fall of 1889, was to establish a town on the two thousand acres the company owned south and east of the confluence of the Chickamauga and Tennessee Rivers.  By the time of the Annual Report of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce that year, a thousand of those acres had been divided already into residential and business lots with several parks laid out, and workers had graded the system of streets as designed which survived well into the next century.  Factories, mills, stores, churches, and schools were all planned, but never came to fruition.

In the ECLC’s plans, the area west of the railroads and north of Cushman Street was designated East Chattanooga (Middle Section) while the area east of the tracks and north of Sims Street was called East Chattanooga (East Section).  One may surmise that the company had intended to designate the area between Cushman and Crutchfield Streets west of Curtis Street as East Chattanooga (West Section), but the Anderson heirs who owned the tract did not sell it to the ECLC.  Instead, the tract became Anderson’s Addition, at least on paper.

The municipality of East Chattanooga

The ECLC did not function just as a real estate company but as a booster for not only its new promised town of East Chattanooga but the “old town” of Chattanooga too, recruiting many types of industries into the area, including metal works factories, various textile mills, stores, even at least two bauxite mines.  Not all these ventures were confined to the two tiny small towns which eventually became the single still small town of East Chattanooga; the two bauxite mines, for example, were located in the suburb of Avondale. 

Which is good, because other than grading streets, the town of East Chattanooga planned by the ECLC never made it from the drawing board to actual existence.

What happened instead was that the municipality of Boyce voted to change its name to East Chattanooga in late 1889.  The post office changed its name from Boyce to East Chattanooga 14 December 1889, and newspapers, almanacs, and city directories after this time use East Chattanooga clearly referring to the municipality formerly known as Boyce.

The people of East Chattanooga had an establishment analogous to Sherman Heights’ hotel Cleburne House called Sherman House, located on the northwest corner of the intersection of what are now North Hawthorne and Wilder Streets.  By 1917, it had ceased being a hotel, though a portion of it continued as a boarding house until its demolition prior to 1930.  By then, civic activity had shifted to what is now Boyce Station Boarding House, at 3021 Dodson Avenue.

Population began to swell at both tiny towns.  In 1890, the population of East Chattanooga (Boyce) was 300.  By 1895, that number was 600 with a new hotel (Sherman House), two churches, a school, and three factories.  Sherman Heights’ population that year was 1500.

The flagship of East Chattanooga’s many industries arrived in the early 1900s.  In 1904, Davis Hosiery Mill opened on Wheeler Avenue at the end of what is now Mill Street, largely through the efforts of the East Chattanooga Land Company.  W.B. Davis, majority stockholder, sold his shares to buy another mill in Fort Payne, Alabama, and the mill here became United Hosiery Mills.  Even as Davis mill, though, the company had acquired the rights to produce children’s apparel with the Buster Brown label.  Eventually, Buster Brown Apparel counted 12 factories and 3500 employees nationwide.  The company shut down in 1999.

The long arm of Chattanooga made its first foray to test the waters for annexation in 1905 by having its postmaster annex the local post offices of East Chattanooga (4 July) and Sherman Heights (14 July), as well as that of Avondale (also 14 July).  This prompted Sherman Heights and East Chattanooga to merge under the latter’s name but with the political center now firmly on Glass Street.  The East Chattanooga Station of the Chattanooga P.O. stood at the intersection of North Chamberlain Avenue and Glass Street, in the northeast corner.

After the merger, Boyce School consolidated with Sherman Heights School, using the latter’s facility, and Sherman Heights (Colored) School moved into the former (and larger) Boyce School building.

Avon Park, which later became the East Chattanooga City Park, was established at the current site of the East Chattanooga YFD in the 1910s.

By the Hamilton County Schools’ 1911-1912 school session, the local schools had changed their names from Sherman Heights to East Chattanooga.  East Chattanooga  School added another building while East Chattanooga (Colored) School moved into a larger facility on Dodson Avenue across from East Chattanooga Park. 

The Boyce Station depot of the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific and the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis burned in 1912.  Southern Railway (SOU), which owned CNO&TP, rebuilt it, the new facility opening in 1913.  That same year, the Sherman Heights Station depot also burned to the ground.  When rebuilt, the new depot was renamed East Chattanooga Station and relocated to approximately the same site as the satellite depot  of the Tennessee Valley Railroad by that name.

The Town of East Chattanooga

In 1917, the Tennessee General Assembly passed “An Act to incorporate the Town of East Chattanooga” (Chapter No. 613, Original Private Acts of the State of Tennessee, Volume 174, 1917). 

The boundaries of the new town ran from the west side of the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway’s right-of-way to the center line of Pearl Street, then following the line of the base of the ridge, from the center line of Ocoee Street in the south to what is now the intersection of Dodson Avenue and Taylor Street in the north.  The eastern town limits ran through the centerlines of York Street and Moon Street then veered west, bypassing the postwar neighborhood of Battery Heights.  The western boundary crossed the CNO&TP to take in the west side of the tracks to Riverside Drive, while the northern boundary took in Trueblood and Billy Goat Hills without reaching Chickamauga River (South Chickamauga Creek).

Also included in the Town of East Chattanooga was a section west of the railroad tracks, north of the center line of Wilder Street (then 3rd Avenue) and west of the center line of North Hickory Street (then 3rd Street) to what is now Mueller Avenue (at the time, Hickory/3rd Street did go that far).  It thus included Boyce Station and the former Sherman House hotel.

The southern town limits as described in the act include far, far more territory than any version I had previously heard, read, or imagined.

The act is quite detailed, amounting to the same as a town charter.  Government of the town was prescribed to be carried out by a Board of Commissioners, of which there were three, elected every two years.  Among themselves, they elected one as Mayor and another as Mayor Pro Tem (i.e., Vice-Mayor).  They were also to elect among themselves a Secretary-Treasurer and a Recorder (who could not be the same person); the Recorder’s office was more that of a Justice of the Peace than the scribal function its name suggests.

The town was divided into three districts:  District No. 1 lay between the center line of Crutchfield Street and the center line of Ocoee Street; District No. 2 lay north of the center line of Crutchfield Street and east of the center line of Taylor Street; District No. 3 lay north of the center line of Crutchfield Street and west of the center line of Taylor Street.

In 1919, the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce established Marr Aviation (or Flying) Field in East Chattanooga, the bounds of the airfield being the CNO&TP to the west, Dodson Avenue to the east, Avondale to the south (at Harriet Tubman Homes site), and Crutchfield Street to the north.  The hanger facilities, control building, and maintenance shop stood in the block south of Daisy Street and west of Roanoke Street (which at this point is now just an alley).  The land was leased from W.H. and Ann Watkins.  Lovell Field replaced it in 1930.

The same year, the State of Tennessee passed an act to disincorporate the Town of East Chattanooga as well as the City of Alton Park, the Town of North Chattanooga, the Town of Riverview, the Town of St. Elmo, and the Taxing District of Missionary Ridge, in the event they voted in favor of annexation into the City of Chattanooga.

An early vote for joining the city failed, as did a following vote in 1921, except for the suburb of Glenwood, which was annexed accordingly the following year. 

In 1923, another vote was taken, with citizens voting in two precincts of East Chattanooga, in in the precinct of Avondale, and in the precinct of Churchville (which also included Stanleyville, Bushtown, Citico City, Rosstown, and the remainder of Orchard Knob not yet annexed).  Residents were voting on whether the entire remaining area between the ridge and the rails north of East 3rd Street should an annexed.  Out of 762 total voting, 391 voted in favor and 371 against.  Newspapers hailed the impending annexations, but given the tight margin, there was a challenge which delayed that.

In 1925, the matter was settled, and the areas that voted as East Chattanooga, Avondale, and Churchville together became the Twelfth Ward of the City of Chattanooga.  Newspapers and locals had already taken to referring to the entire area as East Chattanooga, a designation which came to include the part of Orchard Knob annexed in 1905, as soon as a week after the 1923 vote.

The Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railroad ceased passenger service to Boyce Station in the early 1930s and the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & Texas Pacific Railway (by the decision of Southern Railway) in 1938, after which it was torn down.  At around the same time, Southern also ceased operations at its East Chattanooga Station in Sherman Heights.

Richard Hardy Jr. High School was founded in the late 1920s at its current site.

The last electric trolley line in Chattanooga was the Boyce Line, then operated by Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO).  Its last streetcar made its final run through or past Orchard Knob, Bushtown, Churchville, Avondale, and Sherman Heights to Boyce then back to the trolley barns on Market Street on 10 April 1947.  One of the passengers on the last car that day, Walter Iler (by then president of Lookout Lumber Company), had also ridden on the very first streetcar to ply the Sherman Heights Line in 1889.

The Boone-Hysinger Courts public housing complex, also called the East Chattanooga Courts, opened for tenants in 1952.  Initially occupied by exclusively whites, Boone-Hy started acquiring black residents in the early 1960s.

By the 1960-1961 school year, Mary Ann Garber Elementary School, at the northeast corner of the homes, had opened its doors for students. 

After the Chattanooga City Schools were desegregated in 1960, at least on paper, the two separate schools merged into one of the largest elementary schools in the city and county, eventually filling up three two-story buildings.  Unfortunately, it was one of the establishments which fell in the 1989 school closing massacre, with the majority of students sent to nearby Garber and Hardy Elementary Schools.

Hardy Jr. High survived the 1989 school closing massacre, but changed from a junior high to an elementary school.  Garber Elementary survived the 1989 school closing massacre but was closed at the end of the 2001-2002 school year, with students transferred to Hardy Elementary, which moved into a new building.

By the 1980s when Afro-Americans had become a majority of residents in the Boone-Hy complex and it was renamed Harriet Tubman Homes.  The Chattanooga Housing Authority (CHA) closed Harriet Tubman Homes in 2012 citing needed repairs that would cost $35 million, unhousing three hundred families.

Dixie Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

East Chattanooga was the stronghold of the local Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1921 through the later 1960s.  The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were founded in 1915, but until 1920 mostly confined to Georgia.  Chattanooga Klan No. 4 organized in East Chattanooga in 1921 was the fourth klavern (local KKKK group) in the State of Tennessee.  If it had not already dissolved at the outbreak of World War II, it did so when the national organization shut down in 1944, and there was no further Klan activity until the Civil Rights Era.

In 1957, Chattanooga Klavern No. 1 had gotten such a bad reputation for violence among their fellow Kluxers that the U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which at the same was the largest such body in the South, expelled them.  By that time, their members had committed sixteen floggings and one bombing. 

Upon their expulsion, its members organized as the Dixie Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, with their klavern hall being the former Hamilton Trust & Savings Bank building (1922-1928) at 2507 Glass Street (probably the same they’d been using before).  The new group, also connected to the anti-Jewish National States Rights Party, eventually spread into northwest Georgia, northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Virginia.

Until the latter joined the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Dixie Knights included the klavern (chapter) in Neshoba County, Mississippi, that committed the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer in 1964. 

Jack Brown, the Dixie Knights’ Imperial Wizard, was a suspect in the bombing of the 16th Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September 1863 that killed Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11).

From 1957 to 1960, the Dixie Knights committed seventeen bombings of homes, buses, an integrated YMCA, and Howard High School, two shootings, a beating, and an arson, a record more than ample to earn them the designation of domestic terrorist organization.  They were brazen enough about advertising themselves that they fielded a team in the local baseball league with their organization’s name blazoned across their uniforms.

The overt violence ceased after 1960.  The Dixie Knights continued at the Glass Street site at least through 1964.  That year someone in city government discovered the group had been given a tax exemption in 1960 and wanted to collect back taxes.

The Dixie Knights had affiliated with the National Association of the Ku Klux Klan by 1965, and the Chattanooga klavern had become defunct by the early 1970s.  Part of the reason for its demise was a fraction led by William Church breaking away to form the Justice Knights of  the Ku Klux Klan in 1968. 

By the late 1970s, Church’s son of the same name led the group, as well as the team which perpetrated the armed intimidation of the denizens of the Ninth Street district that ended with the shootings of Viola Ellison, Lela Mae Evans, Katherine O. Johnson, Opal Lee Jackson, and Mary Tyson on 19 April 1980. 

The acquittal of Church Jr. and his cohorts by an all-white jury that summer led to several nights of rioting and a curfew that lasted at least a week.  Having found no justice in the criminal courts, the five women sued their attackers, and in 1982 won a judgment of $535,000.

Avondale

As mentioned above, Avondale is the name of both a suburb and of a subdivision, the latter of which was actually in the suburb of Sherman Heights to the north.  This suburb, Avondale, was never itself a part of the Town of East Chattanooga. 

Remember that Avondale’s mail was addressed to East Chattanooga Station after 1905 and that Judge Shepherd had lumped it, Sherman Heights, and Boyce together.  A writer for Chattanooga News had done the same thing the year prior.  The 1923 legislative act of the Tennessee General Assembly which permitted annexation of the area made clear there was a difference, though it lumped their neighbors to the south together as one under the name Churchville (effectively erasing Bushtown and Stanleyville).

Avondale is/was by far the largest of the suburbs of Greater East Chattanooga with the largest population, and correspondingly, the most factories, mills, and other industries.

On the Union Railway, Avondale had Tinker’s Junction depot on the Orchard Knob Division.

From 1884, Avondale Station, a signal stop, served the CNO&TP, and after the Belt Line built its Citico Division to the railyards and Citico Furnace, it shared the station, which was near the Citico-Holtclaw Avenue crossroads.

Avondale School opened in the earliest days of the suburb and in its various incarnations stood in more or less the same place throughout its existence.  Like its neighbor East Chattanooga Elementary, Avondale Elementary School fell victim to the 1989 school closing massacre.

Ebenezer Methodist Church was founded here in 1875 during the early life of the suburb of Avondale.  In 1934, it moved into a new building under the name Avondale Methodist at the corner of Dodson Avenue and Wilson Street, and later by 1942 had changed its name to Grace Memorial Methodist.  About 1948, Grace Memorial Methodist merged with St. John’s Methodist Episcopal as Avondale Methodist (again).  In 1965, the congregation moved to Bonny Oaks (Laguana and Hadley Drives) under the name Lake Vista Methodist (now Lake Vista United Methodist).

Harrison Avenue Baptist Church was established on East 3rd Street (then Harrison Avenue) in 1893, and about 1900 changed its name to First Missionary Baptist with a move to Harrison Pike (Dodson Avenue).  It was reorganized as Tabernacle Baptist in 1909.  In 1922, the congregation moved to a new building at 2003 Wilcox Boulevard as Avondale Baptist.  Several years ago, the church relocated to TN Highway 58, keeping the name Avondale Baptist.

Rock Island Baptist Church at 2106 Camden Street was founded in 1873 as Rock Island Primitive Baptist just south of what later became the Old Town of Boyce.

Avondale Church of Christ was established in 1934 at 1700 North Chamberlain Avenue.  Still in existence, it later relocated to 1107 Dodson Avenue.

The post office of Avondale operated 1894 to 1905.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Avondale in 1900 was 842.

Suburba

This suburb had its birth because of the Suburba Station depot on the Missionary Ridge Incline Railway.  The depot stood at what is now 8 Shallowford Road.  This initially Forney locomotive-powered railway began operations in 1887 but was purchased two years later by Chattanooga Electric Railway, which electrified it almost immediately.

Initially, the Missionary Ridge Incline Railway began at Ridgedale (or Mission Ridge) Junction on the Belt Line’s Ridgedale Division.  In later years, it instead spurred off Chattanooga Electric Railway’s Oak Street Line, which went through Highland Park.

Unlike the Belt Line, Missionary Ridge Incline Railway maintained its designated stations even after electrification.  This depot operated until just after the turn of the century as Suburba, after which the station became known as McCallie Avenue.

The Suburba Post Office operated from 1885 to 1901.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Suburba in 1900 was 52.

Indian Springs

This suburb owed its existence to the Indian Springs Station depot on the Belt Line, which stood at the Harrison Avenue (East 3rd Street) crossing.  The place was already a popular recreation spot for people from all over Greater East Chattanooga.  The springs themselves are at the site now occupied by what was once Parkwood Nursing Home, next to Memorial Hospital.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Indian Springs in 1900 was 34.

Glenwood

This posh suburb on a par with Fort Wood and Park Place eclipsed both Indian Springs and Suburba by spreading out to cover both their lands.  Despite what the neighborhood signs now say, the first resident did not take up his abode until 1901.  Build up of the neighborhood was slow, with just fourteen houses built and occupied by 1914.

Glenwood School opened its doors in the Hamilton County Schools by 1930 and ended its life at the close of the 1970-1971 school year as Glenwood Elementary School.  This historic school now serves as Glenwood YFD.

Glenwood voted in favor of annexation in 1921 and became part of Chattanooga in 1922.

The first home built was that of James B. Frazier, who two years later became governor of Tennessee, and two years after that a U.S. Senator, still standing at 211 Glenwood Drive.

THE BLACK HAMLETS EAST OF CHATTANOOGA

Several local newspapers articles of the early 20th century mention the “small black hamlets” in reference to Bushtown, Churchville, and Stanleyville (or Stanleytown), often using those three names specifically.  Some articles use one of the three names to refer to all three as if they are one entity, much like the case with East Chattanooga and Avondale, and most often that name is Churchville, as in the 1923 Act of the Tennessee General Assembly authorizing the annexation by Chattanooga of  “East Chattanooga, Avondale, and Churchville”.

I’m including Rosstown and Orchard Knob because they too were entirely Afro-American (or almost) and because they were annexed at the same time.

According to the 5 December 1887 Chattanooga Times article “A City of Negroes”, the reason for the relocation to these new areas of Afro-Americans from “the valuable hilltops” (meaning the eastern ends of Brabson Hill, which in reality stretches from Market Street to Central—then East End—Avenue) was due to “the advance in real estate in the city” (i.e., the creation of the posh white suburbs of Fort Wood and Park Place). 

In other words, the mass outward relocation of Afro-Americans in the mid-1880s was due to what we now call gentrification and the opponents of “urban renewal” in the 1950s and ‘60s called by the more accurate name, “Negro Removal”, which was the title of a recent report on the current situation published by Chattanoogans Organized for Action (COA).  And that is very likely most of the story, but not all of it.

According to that 1887 article, there were already 800 people in the area (all Afro-American except for one family) and that 110 houses had been built.

According to many sources, the chief supporter of all three suburbs—Bushtown, Churchville, and Stanleyville—was Charles Stanley.  His direct contributions included development of Stanley’s Subdivision and donation of land for the churches of four congregations.

Bushtown

This suburb lies basically within the bounds of Holtclaw Avenue on the east and Orchard Knob Avenue on the west between East 3rd Street on the south and Citico Avenue in north but it also includes Carson and Newell Avenues and Milne Street north of Citico Avenue.  The extension covers a subdivision known as Cherokee Park, plus the site of the former W.S. Milne Chair Factory, which was probably the major employer.

Going by the article, the town (not named in the article) by December 1887 already had a church, a school, and four stores by that date.  That the town described was Bushtown rather than either Churchville or Stanleyville is indicated by the article’s describes of the town as being a “short distance” from the Belt Line, which actually pierces both of the other suburbs.  

The church referred to can only have been Clegg’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Methodist Church, though it was not officially incorporated until 1889.   If that early school was called Bushtown School, then early on it must have merged with its neighbor to the east.

Monteagle Primitive Baptist Church was established at 1234 Garfield Street in 1912, and became Good Hope Primitive Baptist Church in 1920.

Incorporated (either as a private entity or a taxing district) in the spring of 1888, Bushtown became the first autonomous Afro-American municipality in Tennessee.

Other than being the first black-controlled municipality in Tennessee, Bushtown’s contribution to the Afro-American history of Chattanooga and Hamilton County lies in its hosting a little known jewel whose knowledge has been lost to most.  Despite the fact that its first mention in the Chattanooga City Directory was in 1914, Abraham Lincoln High School may have existed much earlier, with some sources suggesting as early as 1904. 

For years Lincoln High served as the county school system’s only high school for Afro-Americans (the city’d had Howard School since 1865).  The building stood at the eastern corner of North Holly Street and Cleveland Avenue.

In their earliest incarnations, high schools separate from lower elementary grades, at least in Chattanooga and Hamilton County (which had their own education systems until 1997), mostly hosted grades seven through twelve, and this is likely the case for Bushtown’s Lincoln High.  After Bushtown was annexed in 1925 along with the rest of Greater East Chattanooga, Lincoln’s upper students (grades 10-12) were sent to Howard High School and it became Lincoln Junior High School. 

This lasted until the end of the 1935-1936 school year, when the city school system closed it, transferring its students to what became Orchard Knob Elementary and Junior High School.  Such an arrangement was not unique as three other schools (all Afro-American also) followed the same pattern:  Calvin Donaldson School, East Fifth Street School, and Second District School.  In the county, until the 1970s, Sale Creek School and Birchwood School operated with twelve grades in one building (as did Booker T. Washington School for much of its life).

Given this history, the Orchard Knob Junior High (now Middle) School established in 1961 is the direct heir of the former Abraham Lincoln High School, especially since, like its predecessor, it stands in the Bushtown community.

There are disputes about the origin of the name, with some claiming that land upon which Bushtown is built was once part of a huge antebellum farm of a white man surnamed Bush while others claim it is named for the first postbellum black homesteader here.  Frankly, if it followed patterns of the time, it was named after its chief developer or promoter, as was the case with Tadestown (north of East 9th Street) and Scruggstown (south of East 9th).

The oldest church in Bushtown is New Anointing Pure Holiness Church, founded in 1927.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Bushtown in 1900 was 584.

Stanleyville

A name now all but entirely erased from the landscape of Chattanooga, this name refers to Stanley’s Subdivision, which was personally developed by Charles Stanley himself.  This suburb of a single subdivision lay with the bounds of Citico Avenue on the north and Blackford Street in the south between North Willow Street and Arlington Avenue.

That this suburb, at least, as well as almost certainly the others, were being developed and settled before the time indicated by that article is evident from the fact that Stanley donated the land for and helped build Stanley Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church (now Stanley United Methodist), which organized in 1886.  Stanley also did the same for Prospect Missionary Baptist Church (1887) and Mount Ollie Primitive Baptist Church (1891) in this suburb, both of which likewise still exist.

The Belt Line’s Orchard Knob Division (which terminated in Boyce) bisected Stanleyville along Dodson Avenue, one of the few stretches in which it ran on a street like an electric trolley.  The name of the depot, which stood at the intersection of Dodson Avenue and Blackford Street, was initially Stanleyville.

The suburb has more or less been entirely absorbed by its western neighbor, Churchville.

Churchville

Though the popular belief is that this suburb is called thus due to the number of churches it hosts, here too the greater probability is the more mundane prospect that it bears the same name as its primary promoter or developer.   Churchville originally lay within Robbins Street, East 3rd Street, Orchard Knob Avenue, and North Willow Street, extending to Dodson Avenue between Blackford Street and East 3rd Street.  Today it pretty much includes all of Stanleyville too.

One of its churches, like those of Stanleyville, dates back to the days of Charles Stanley, who donated its land, this being Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.  Another bit of evidence of the early birth of this community is that the Churchville branch of the Knights of the Wise Men laid the cornerstone of Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church in 1887.

The Church of the Living God, formally known as the House of God, Which Is the Church of the Living God, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth Without Controversy, was founded in 1908.

Even though Bushtown had a headstart and early on more prestige, by the turn of the century, Churchville had eclipsed its neighbors on either side to become the premier community of the “small black hamlets”.  The Belt Line passed through the suburb’s eastern portion on the way to Stanleyville, and the Chattanooga Electric Railway ran along its southern edge down East 3rd Street before turning north to travel through it along Roanoke Street. 

Though the name of the Belt Line’s depot at the intersection of Dodson Avenue and Blackford Street began as Stanleyville, it soon changed to Churchville.  As for the electric streetcar line, which ended in Boyce/East Chattanooga, here it was known as the Churchville line.

Churchville School had almost certainly absorbed Bushtown School before merging into Orchard Knob School after the 1904-1905 school year.

Churchville played a significant part in the Chattanooga Streetcar Boycott of 1905 against the state-imposed segregation of public transportation.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Churchville in 1900 was 614, including Stanleyville.

The Chattanooga Streetcar Boycott of 1905

The working-class citizens of Chattanooga boycotted streetcars in support of striking carmen the in 1899, 1911, 1916, and 1917, but those boycotts were over labor issues.  This boycott was solely about human dignity.

In July 1905, the State of Tennessee, whose original constitution in 1796 guaranteed universal suffrage to all men, including free blacks, enacted a law segregating all public transportation.  When this was attempted locally before, the response of Afro-Americans was vigorous and sometimes violent.  The most extreme case was in 1885, when Charles Williams shot dead a carman who demanded he sit at the back of the car.  This time, however, Randolph Miller, publisher of the nationally-syndicated The Chattanooga Weekly Blade, and Hiram Tyree, Alderman from the Fourth Ward, led a boycott of Chattanooga’s streetcars. 

As part of the boycott, Miller organized four horse-powered hack lines to the predominantly (or entirely) Afro-American communities of St. Elmo (Gambletown section), Fort Cheatham, Tannery Flats, and Churchville.  After some success with the hack lines, Miller and others set about forming the Transfer Omnibus Motor Car Company , patterned after a successful such venture in Nashville, an early version of a taxi service, but the effort never materialized due to lack of investors.

The boycott managed to hold out for three months before collapsing in the face of resistance from white political leaders, harassment by police, and opposition from most Afro-American businessmen and virtually all the black religious leaders despite the fact that most average Afro-Americans in Chattanooga supported it.  The opposition from black leaders came from adherence to the “Atlanta Compromise” of Booker T. Washington. 

In a speech at the International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895 (the same year that Frederick Douglass died), Washington promised in the name of all Afro-Americans not to resist racism, segregation, discrimination, and other forms of white supremacy in return for getting free basic education and vocational-industrial training (with liberal arts prohibited). 

Initially supported by W.E.B. DuBois (who later vigorously opposed it), Washington was bitterly condemned by Douglass’ friend and successor, Ida B. Wells, a leading civil rights activist, anti-lynching crusader, and later a co-founder with DuBois and others of the NAACP.

Rosstown

This was a tiny suburb of nonetheless multiple subdivisions to the east of Orchard Knob often listed alongside Bushtown, Churchville, and Stanleyville in places such as the online history of Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church, for example.  It was sandwiched in between North Lyerly Street and Derby Street, from McCallie Avenue to East 5th Street.

The only known church in the suburb was St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church at the corner of North Watkins and Vine Streets.

Rosstown was established probably in the 1890s, and though small, still fielded its own baseball team in the city’s amateur Negro League.

The suburb lost about a third of its homes and families to Central High School’s Frawley Field, which opened for football in 1934.

Central High School moved to TN Highway 58 in 1969, but construction of Parkridge Medical Center and its parking lots and adjacent facilities began shortly thereafter.  When it opened in 1971, nearly all the rest of old Rosstown had been obliterated. 

Twenty-five years ago, a small portion of the north part of the old suburb remained, but those houses are now all gone, replaced by duplexes.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Rosstown in 1900 was 145.

Orchard Knob

As a venture, Orchard Knob was launched by the McCallie Avenue Land Company in 1887 as Orchard Knob Addition, from Holtzclaw Avenue to North Kelley Street between McCallie Avenue and East 3rd Street.  The later Henderson Addition extended the boundary on the east end to North Lyerly Avenue.  A large majority of residents were Afro-American.  The name, of course, comes from the eponymous reservation within it of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, though it was named in advance thereof.

For transportation, Orchard Knob had the Belt Line’s (Union Railway) Orchard Knob Division as well as the Sherman Heights-Boyce, the Oak Street, and the Willow Street Lines of the Chattanooga Electric Railway.  Its depot on the Belt Line at the intersection of Vine Street and Orchard Knob Avenue was initially named Bald Knob, then changed to Orchard Knob.

Orchard Knob Missionary Baptist Church was organized in May 1887, and a building was erected almost immediately on the same block the congregation now inhabits.

The post office of Orchard Knob operated 1888-1894, with service afterward being transferred to Highland Park P.O.

The school here was founded by Hamilton County as Tenth District School in 1902, then it moved and was renamed to Orchard Knob School in 1904.  At the end of the 1904-1905 school year, it absorbed the nearby Churchville School.  By 1911, it had a high school element, though the definition of high school at the time often meant grades seven through twelve, so this may mean seven through nine.

The better part of the suburb of Orchard Knob was annexed into the City of Chattanooga in 1922, except for a small tract that included the school.  In 1925, this tract was annexed along with the other suburbs of East Chattanooga, including Bushtown.

After annexation, the top three grades of Bushtown’s Abraham Lincoln High School were transferred to Howard High School, and it became Lincoln Junior High School.  This lasted until the end of the 1935-1936 school year when Lincoln Jr. High was closed and its grades added to Orchard Knob, which then became Orchard Knob Elementary and Junior High School. 

In 1961, the junior high portion moved into a new building in Bushtown as Orchard Knob Junior High School.   Now Orchard Knob Middle School, it is a direct successor to the former Lincoln Jr. High School and through it to Abraham Lincoln High School, the first high school for Afro-American students in the Hamilton County Schools.

Orchard Knob Elementary School merged with Highland Park Elementary in 1989.

According to the Chattanooga City Directory, the population of Orchard Knob in 1900 was 254.

PERIPHERAL COMMUNITIES

Peripheral in this case does not mean unimportant, just that they lie outside the area usually considered  part of Greater East Chattanooga, though they have at one time or another been designated such in the past.

East Chattanooga west of the Railroads

This is the area referred to as East Chattanooga (Middle Section) in the plans of the East Chattanooga Land Company.  The large estates here before suburbanization were those of Crutchfield, Anderson, and Vinson.

Amnicola

A writer for the Chattanooga Times in 1915 referred to this area as East Chattanooga, probably meaning everything west of the tracks.  Often called Curtain Pole, the center of the community was the H.L. Judd Manufacturing curtain pole factory.  Most of what is now Amnicola Highway south of Chickamauga River was once Curtain Pole Road.  The current Judd Road was the northernmost stretch, ending at the factory.

The factory opened in 1890.  Later, a small company town grew up along the northern end of Curtain Pole Road that included Sherman Hill Baptist Church.

By the 1920s, Amnicola School had opened where the Chattanooga Police Department is now.  It was closed after the area was annexed into the City of Chattanooga.

Sherwood Forest

This community, lying north of Stuart Street and south of Wisdom Street between Freeman Street and Riverside Drive, probably originated as company housing for the workers at the H.L. Judd factory.

Sherman Hill Church of Christ opened here in 1915.

Bozentown

Also spelled Bosentown.  This community goes back to the dawn of the 20th century, and lies north of Fairleigh Street between Benton Avenue and Riverside Drive, taking in everything north to the point where Wood Avenue turns right and intersects Riverside Drive.  A few houses on the opposite side of the later near that intersection belong to Bozentown.

Bozentown has always been Afro-American since its beginning.  Until the ‘90s, the center of the community was the First Baptist Church of Bozentown, founded in 1930.  In 1990, the church and its members relocated to the former building of Ridgedale United Methodist Church, my paternal grandmother’s church, on Dodds Avenue, keeping their name.

But the earliest church in Bozentown was Joseph Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1921.

The most noteworthy nature physical feature of Bozentown, according to several former East Chattanooga residents of my acquaintance, is the nearby Gobblers Peak, which may refer to the knob in the vicinity of Belle Arbor Avenue.

Gobbler’s Peak

This is a knoll near Bozentown whose crest lies within the block made by Belle Arbor Avenue, Farleigh Street, Bliss Avenue, and Farleigh Avenue.  It is also the local name for the residential area occupying the block, though the proper but less colorful name of the neighborhood is Torber’s Subdivision.

Riverside Park

Though its current incarnation is postwar (World War II), there was almost certainly an Afro-American community here by the 1920s, for the Rosenwald Foundation purchased a lot at the corner of Riverside Drive and Crutchfield Street upon which to build Roland Hays School.

The City of Chattanooga closed Hays Elementary School after annexing this and the rest of the communities west of the railroads in 1968.

The community lies south of Crutchfield Street between the northern Debutts Yards and a rail spur on the west which once served H.L. Judd Co.

Roland Hays Courts

This was a small subdivision on the north side of Crutchfield Street extending from Curtain Pole Road (Amnicola Highway) to Benton Drive.  A few residences still remain.

Other East Chattanooga-related communities

Citico City

Better known now as Lincoln Park, this community, often referred to simply as Citico, originated as a company town for Afro-American workers at the Citico Furnace.  A 1927 newpaper item that mentioned the yardmaster at Citico referred to the location as “Citico, East Chattanooga”.

In its early years, the Gillespie School served its children, who later went to East Fifth Street School.  The community was annexed into the city in 1886.

Citico Furnace began working in 1884 and continued until 1911.  In its heyday Citico Furnace was important enough that it was the reason for which Citico (now Debutts) Rail Yards began to take shape and for the Citico Junction of the Cincinnati, New Orleans, & St. Louis Railway, the Southern Railway (earlier East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad), and the Chattanooga Union Railway (the Belt Line).

After the furnace shut down, Citico City became primarily home to workers on the Southern Railway and the Citico (now DeButts) Yards.  The railway company even built Citico Hotel for Afro-American workers needing temporary accommodations; it stood on Scruggs Street halfway between Pierce Street and Cleveland Avenue.  According to Dr. Courtney Elizabeth Knapp, the hotel’s porch served as the planning space for many civil rights and labor actions.

In 1918, the City of Chattanooga built Tennessee’s first public park for Afro-Americans, which gave the community its now more common name.  Lincoln Park at its height was famous all over the South, and even in the rest of the country.  It was then more than twice its size; its western portions of the historic park are now occupied with satellite facilities of Erlanger Hospital.

In the 1920s, Citico City lost half its lands to the expansion of Citico Yards.  The fear of the community is that if the City of Chattanooga goes through with its extension of Central Avenue to Riverside Drive that Lincoln Park will be further reduced or even destroyed entirely, along with its community.

King’s Bridge

In the 1890s, the Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway built a depot at approximately the same site as its antebellum depot of Old Boyce.  Primarily a signal stop, the depot was on the railroad’s schedule for a few years.  Naturally, a community grew up here, and some remained even after the depot was removed.

The bridge in question was built over Chickamauga River at the former Sivley Ford of the Harrison Turnpike.

Kings Point Baptist Church organized here in 1948.

King’s Point

When the CNO&TP arrived in 1880, enterprising individuals organized the King’s Point Land Company to build a planned town upon five hundred acres purchased from the farm of John D. King, which he had named Toqua after the Cherokee settlement there.

The roads are still laid out today as they originally were, the exception being that the north portion of the town across the tracks no longer exists.

CNO&TP’s depot of King’s Point stood at the end of North Wilder Road and operated well into the early years of the 20th century.  Later in the century, the railroad put another depot here or near here called Hulsey.

The post office of King’s Point operated from 1883 until 1898. 

King’s Point School operated here from the earliest days of the community.  In the 1940s, it consolidated with its cousin to the east as Jersey-King Point School.  In the early 1960s, the school became Hillcrest Elementary School.

Most of the residents attended Chickamauga (now Oakwood) Baptist Church.  As a matter of fact, when the church’s meeting place burned down in 1888, the church used the Kings Point School until they built a new facility.

POSTWAR COMMUNITIES

Subdivisions and neighborhoods included under the modern usage of the term East Chattanooga that grew up after the Second World War include Battery Heights (on Billy Goat Hill and including the eponymous apartments), Silver Crest (from the western end of Addison Road east to the railroad tracks, including Bryant Street, Churchill Road, Dwight Street, and Lookaway Drive across Bonny Oaks Drive), Gaylan Heights (on Lowery's Hill, Tugaloo and Talatha Streets and their connecting streets south of Bonny Oaks Drive), and Chamlee Heights (in Fords Gap on New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania Avenues and the south side of the adjacent section of Lightfoot Mill Road west of Tunnel Boulevard).  To these in the 21st century was added the community of Waterhaven (on the left bank of South Chickamauga Creek west of Harrison Pike).