Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located along the Tennessee River and borders Georgia to the south. The population was 181,099 at the 2020 census, and was estimated at 191,496 in 2024, it is Tennessee's fourth-most populous city and one of the two principal cities of East Tennessee, along with Knoxville. It anchors the Chattanooga metropolitan area, Tennessee's fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area, as well as a larger three-state area that includes southeastern Tennessee, northwestern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama.
Chattanooga was a crucial city during the American Civil War due to the multiple railroads that converge there. After the war, the railroads allowed for the city to grow into one of the Southeastern United States' largest heavy industrial hubs. Today, major industry that drives the economy includes automotive, advanced manufacturing, food and beverage production, healthcare, insurance, tourism, and back office and corporate headquarters. Chattanooga remains a transit hub in the present day, served by multiple Interstate highways and railroad lines. It is northwest of Atlanta, Georgia, southwest of Knoxville, Tennessee, southeast of Nashville, Tennessee, east-northeast of Huntsville, Alabama, and northeast of Birmingham, Alabama.
Divided by the Tennessee River, Chattanooga is at the transition between the ridge-and-valley Appalachians and the Cumberland Plateau, both of which are part of the larger Appalachian Mountains. Its official nickname is the "Scenic City", alluding to the surrounding mountains, ridges, and valleys. Unofficial nicknames include "River City", "Chatt", "Nooga", "Chattown", and "Gig City", the latter referring to Chattanooga's claim of having the fastest internet service in the Western Hemisphere.
Chattanooga is internationally known from the 1941 hit song "Chattanooga Choo Choo" by Glenn Miller and his orchestra. It is home to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Community College.
History
Early history
The first inhabitants of the Chattanooga area were Native Americans. Sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period show continuous human occupation through the Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian/Muskogean/Yuchi, and Cherokee periods. The Chickamauga Mound near the mouth of the Chickamauga Creek is the oldest remaining visible art in Chattanooga.The Citico town and mound site was the most significant Mississippian/Muscogee landmark in Chattanooga up to 1915. The first part of the name "Chattanooga" derives from the Muskogean word cvto /chắtȯ/ – 'rock'. The latter may be derived from a regional suffix -nuga meaning dwelling or dwelling place. It is also believed to be derived from the Creek Indian word Chat-to-to-noog-gee, meaning 'rock rising to a point', which is speculated to be a reference to Lookout Mountain.
The earliest Cherokee occupation of the area dates from 1776, when Dragging Canoe separated himself from the main tribe to establish resistance to European settlement during the Cherokee–American wars. In 1816 John Ross, who later became Principal Chief, established Ross's Landing. Located along what is now Broad Street, it became one of the centers of Cherokee Nation settlement, which also extended into Georgia and Alabama.
In 1838, the U.S. government forced the Cherokees, along with other Native Americans, to relocate to the area designated as Indian Territory, in what is now the state of Oklahoma. Their journey west became known as the "Trail of Tears" for their exile and fatalities along the way. The U.S. Army used Ross's Landing as the site of one of three large internment camps, or "emigration depots", where Native Americans were held before the journey on the Trail of Tears.
In 1839, the community of Ross's Landing incorporated as the city of Chattanooga. The city grew quickly, initially benefiting from a location well-suited for river commerce. With the arrival of the railroad in 1850, Chattanooga became a boom town. The city was known as the site "where cotton meets corn," referring to its location along the cultural boundary between the mountain communities of southern Appalachia and the cotton-growing states to the south.
Civil War
During the American Civil War, Chattanooga was a center of battle. Chattanooga served as a hub connecting fifty percent of the Confederacy's arsenals, those being located in Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, and Macon. Chattanooga's railroads were vital to the Confederacy's transportation of raw material to processing plants for producing small arms munitions. During the Chickamauga Campaign, Union artillery bombarded Chattanooga as a diversion and occupied it on September 9, 1863. Following the Battle of Chickamauga, the defeated Union Army retreated to safety in Chattanooga. On November 23, 1863, the Battles for Chattanooga began when Union forces led by Major General Ulysses S. Grant reinforced troops at Chattanooga and advanced to Orchard Knob against Confederate troops besieging the city. The next day, the Battle of Lookout Mountain was fought, driving the Confederates off the mountain. On November 25, Grant's army routed the Confederates in the Battle of Missionary Ridge. In regard to victories won by the Union, Chattanooga marks one of three defining moments that turned the Civil War in their favor. The Battle of Gettysburg brought the streak of victories obtained by the Confederacy to an end, while the Siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy itself in half, while Chattanooga served as the doorway to the Deep South. These battles were followed the next spring by the Atlanta campaign, beginning just over the nearby state line in Georgia and moving southeastward. After the war ended, the city became a major railroad hub and industrial and manufacturing center.1867 flood
The largest flood in Chattanooga's history occurred in 1867, before the Tennessee Valley Authority system was created in 1933 by Congress. The flood crested at and completely inundated the city. Since the completion of the reservoir system, the highest Chattanooga flood stage has been nearly, which occurred in 1973. Without regulation, the flood would have crested at. Chattanooga was a major priority in the design of the TVA reservoir system and remains a major operating priority in the 21st century.20th century
In December 1906, Chattanooga was in the national headlines in United States v. Shipp, as the United States Supreme Court, in the only criminal trial in its history, ruled that Hamilton County Sheriff Joseph H. Shipp had violated Ed Johnson's civil rights when Shipp allowed a mob to enter the Hamilton County jail and lynch Johnson on the Walnut Street Bridge.Chattanooga grew with the entry of the United States in the First World War in 1917; the nearest training camp was in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. The Influenza pandemic of 1918 closed local movie theaters and pool halls. By the 1930s, Chattanooga was known as the "Dynamo of Dixie", inspiring the 1941 Glenn Miller big-band swing song "Chattanooga Choo Choo". Through Mayor P.R. Olgiati's efforts, Chattanooga became the first city in Tennessee to have a completed interstate highway system in the latter 1960s. In February 1958, Chattanooga became one of the smallest cities in the country with three VHF television stations: WROM-TV channel 9, WRGP-TV channel 3, and WDEF-TV channel 12.
The same mountains that provide Chattanooga's scenic backdrop also trap industrial pollutants, which settle over the city. In 1969, the federal government declared that Chattanooga had the dirtiest air in the nation. Like other early industrial cities, Chattanooga entered the 1970s with serious socioeconomic challenges, including job layoffs because of de-industrialization, deteriorating city infrastructure, racial tensions, and social division. Chattanooga's population increased by nearly 50,000 in the 1970s. However, this was mostly because the city annexed nearby residential areas. By the mid-1980s, local leaders launched Vision 2000, an effort to revitalize and reinvent Chattanooga's culture and economy. Chattanooga's population declined by more than 10% in the 1980s, but regained it over the next two decades, the only major U.S. city to do so in that period.
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement of Chattanooga began in 1960 when teenage students of Howard High School, inspired by activists in Nashville and Greensboro, began to organize a similar sit-in protest. Class President Paul Walker, Lehman Pierce and as many as 200 other black students organized peaceful sit-ins at four businesses along one block in downtown Chattanooga. White youth mobs responded with agitation, inflammatory language and violence. By the third day, Mayor Rudy Olgiatti instructed the fire department to utilize water hoses on crowds becoming the first city to utilize this tactic against protesters. Three months later the city would agree to desegregate the downtown businesses.Unlike many southern cities the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. did not lead to riots in Chattanooga. Mayor Kelley and Police Commissioner Turner met with young people to defuse the situation and bought the protesters lunch. The frustrated youths voiced their complaints about racial injustice in Chattanooga, but were convinced to peacefully disperse.
In 1971, John Franklin Sr. became the first African-American elected official of Chattanooga. However racial tensions related to poverty and education continued to simmer. In the same year, a cancelled concert refusing to give ticket refunds sparked a four-day riot of black youth. An all-night curfew was called and close to 2,000 National Guard troops arrived in the city, setting up a post at City Hall. The unrest led to 1 death and 300 arrests.
On April 19, 1980, three Ku Klux Klan members rode down historic E. 9th Street, M. L. King Blvd. today, and opened fire on five black women: Viola Ellison, Lela Mae Evans, Katherine O. Johnson, Opal Lee Jackson and Fannie Crumsey. All of the women survived. When an all-white jury acquitted the three Klan members for their crime, Chattanooga erupted into four nights of rioting. Not deterred by the jury verdict, the five women went on to be plaintiffs in a historic civil lawsuit against the Klan. In 1982, the federal courts ordered the Klan to pay the women $535,000 on account of the attack. This case created the legal strategy for dismantling the Klan across the country in the following years.
In 1987, the city's at-large voting process was challenged on the basis that it marginalized the voting power of Black voters. The issue was initially presented by Lorenzo Ervin, Annie Thomas and Maxine Cousin to the ACLU in Atlanta. Following the case of Brown v. Board of Commissioners of Chattanooga, the city terminated the at-large voting system.