Our Town Chattanooga Part One: The Early History of Chattanooga

We're kicking off a new series today called "Our Town Chattanooga" Over the next week, we'll be highlighting some of the memorable places and events in the history of our city. WDEF News 12's Nordia Epps starts with a look at where it all began. UTC UC Foundation Professor of Anthropology Dr. Nicholas Honerkamp says, "We can go all the way back about 10 or 12 thousand years. That's when the earliest Native American groups lived in this area.” Doctor Honerkamp says there's no telling what the first inhabitants of the Chattanooga area called themselves. But artifacts dating back thousands of years tell their story. By 1200 AD, the fertile farmland of the valley enticed the nomadic tribes to settle down into large villages. "There was a major village over by what's now the boathouse restaurant which had a mound, had a surrounding village. the mound was 150 or 160 by 120 feet and 35 ft tall. it had a chief with a house living on top of it and stairs leading up to it a very elaborate kind of society," says Honerkamp. Those are the types of societies Spanish conquistadors encountered here in the 16th century. By then we knew their names; Shawnee, Cherokee and Creek, according to Doctor Daryl Black. White settlers soon joined the Native Americans. Then the first inkling of Chattanooga came with John Ross. "John Ross in 1816 created a trading post on the Tennessee River where the aquarium sits today. Ross's Landing was a low point and an easy point by which you could access the river,” says Dr. Black. "It was a place where Cherokee and White Tennesseeans interacted and traded. relations seemed to be fairly good between the traders and the Cherokees themselves." But it didn't stay that way for long, turning sour when first squatters then the U.S. government took over the Cherokee nation in 1828. Forced to leave the land that stretched from Rome to Chattanooga, the Trail of Tears passed through our town Chattanooga. "Between 2500 and 4,000 Cherokee are concentrated. They camped for about 6 months in the stretch of land that runs from the mouth of Citico Creek all the way back over the Missionary Ridge," Dr. Black says. “In 1838 when the land legally passes to the U.S. and becomes a part of the state of Tennessee, they start laying out streets and they lay it out in a grid pattern and basically Chattanooga was encompassed in the space between the bottom of Cameron's Hill and Georgia Avenue and then as far south as MLK. " Dr. Honerkamp says "Chattanooga in the 19th century was an important industrial and economic trading and transportation town." And by the 1850's the railroads were the transportation of choice. First Western Atlantic connected Atlanta and Chattanooga. Then East Tennessee railroad and Virginia Railroad connected those two areas. The railroads made Chattanooga a significant battleground during the Civil War. "Chattanooga becomes a target because it's a place through which supplies could move from the deep part of the South where the confederacy had begun building an industrial base to supply their armies,” says Dr.Black. In 1862 and 63 the second largest armies of the Confederacy and the Union focused their attention on Chattanooga, which falls to Union forces in 1863. After the Union received a severe blow in the Battle of Chickamauga, they remain under siege in Chattanooga until General Ulysses S. Grant came to the rescue. The Union army then attacked and drove the Confederates off Look Out Mountain and later Missionary Ridge. But the cost to the city was great. "The city was basically denuded and turned into a city of ramshackle sort of wooden frame buildings. it was a very ugly place in 1863, 64. what had been a beautiful city nestled in woods in august of 1863 became a barren wasteland," Dr. Black says. Industry brought Chattanooga back from that ruin. "The city really booms in the 1880's early 1890s. It experiences a tremendous amount of industrial growth becoming a very important early, I guess you could say, New South place focusing on industry, focusing on iron manufacturing and focusing on building a modern American city." There's been many rumors about where the name Chattanooga came from and what it means. Turns out, Honerkamp says, it's not a Creek or Cherokee word but rather the name of a Cherokee group and the place they lived in. Join us Monday for a look at a significant neighborhood located right here in Our Town Chattanooga.