James H. Ruggles

GEDCOM Note

According to some obituaries on file at the McClung Collection, Ruggles Ferry Pike is named for James Ruggles, ca. 1829-1911, who ran a ferry across the Holston River in the latter part of the 19th century. On an 1895 map, a Mr. J. Ruggles is noted as living on the east side of the river at the site of the ferry, which crossed the river about where I-40 crosses it today.

But Mr. Ruggles never knew Ruggles Ferry Pike by that name. When he died, at the ripe old age of 81, the road was known as Armstrong Ferry Pike. The older name Armstrong, after the family of Irish immigrant James Armstrong, one of the area's earliest settlers, survives in a few geographical features in the Forks of the River area, including an island near the ferry site.

Armstrong's Ferry Pike was in fact the address of the last home Mr. Ruggles shared with his wife, Isabella, near Chilhowee Park, and that may call for some further explanation. The road was known by that name all the way to its intersection with McCalla in semi-urban Burlington, to the Forks of the River area.

Perhaps as a memorial for a beloved and well-remembered ferryman, the long road became better known as Ruggles Ferry Pike by 1925; but with suburban development in the Holston Hills area, parts of it got redeveloped and renamed. By the Jazz Age, references to ferries seemed old-fashioned, so by 1930, the town part of Ruggles Ferry Pike became known as Holston Drive, the name it has kept to this day.