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Official Website
Chattanooga borders Georgia and the Tennessee River. It lies within 150 miles of Atlanta, Georgia, Knoxville, Tennessee, Huntsville, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama, which makes it a major transit hub.
Chattanooga has several nicknames which are: "Scenic City", "River City", "Chatt", "Nooga", "Chattown" and "Gig City".
Glenn Miller and his orchestra created a song for the city, named "Chattanooga Choo-Choo".
History
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.
During the American Civil War, Chattanooga was a center of battle. Chattanooga served as a hub connecting fifty percent the Confederacy's arsenals, those being located in Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, and Macon. Chattanooga railroads proved vital in the Confederacy's transportation of raw material to processing plants where they were responsible 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 a 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.
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.
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 early 1960s.
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.
Chattanooga launched the first one-gigabit-per-second Internet service in the United States in September 2010, provided through the city-owned utility EPB.
In August 2012, Chattanooga developed its own typeface, called Chatype, which marks the first time a municipality has its own typeface in the United States and the first crowd-funded, custom-made typeface in the world.
On July 16, 2015, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He first committed a drive-by shooting at a recruiting center, then traveled to a U.S. Navy Reserve center and continued firing, where he was killed by police in a gunfight. Four Marines died on the spot. A Navy sailor, a Marine recruiter, and a police officer were wounded; the sailor died from his injuries two days later.
On December 16, following an investigation, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James B. Comey said that the shootings were "motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda."
On November 21, 2016, a school bus carrying students from Woodmore Elementary School crashed in the Brainerd neighborhood, killing 6 and injuring 23. In March 2018, the driver, an employee of Durham School Services was convicted of six counts of criminally negligent homicide, 11 counts of reckless aggravated assault, seven counts of assault, reckless endangerment, reckless driving and illegally using his cell phone while driving.
Neighborhoods
- East Brainerd
- Ferger Place
- Fort Wood
- Highland Park
- Lupton City
- Missionary Ridge
- St. Elmo
- Lookout Valley
- Tyner
Links
Lookout Mountain Incline Railway
