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Images Of America Chattanooga’s Transportation Heritage BY David H. Steinberg
Images Of America Chattanoogas Transportation Heritage BY David H. Steinberg
Softcover 127 pages
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.The Horse Car Era
2.The Formative Years of Electric Traction
3.The Steam Dummy Lines/The Rapid Transit
4.The Golden Traction Years
5.The Chattanooga Traction Company
6.The Sunset Traction Years
7.The Inclines, Street Railways, and Railroads of
Lookout Mountain
8.Southern Coach Lines/Today's CARTA Transit System
9.The Hales Bar Freight Line
10.The Cameron Hill Incline and Street Railway About the Organization
INTRODUCTION
When one looks at available Chattanooga photographs for 1875, they depict the main thoroughfare of Market Street as an unpaved street that required stepping stones to enable one to cross to the other side in the event of inclement weather. They also show rows of retail stores on either side of the street that, with a few exceptions, resemble what in our day would only be called hovels. Yet the small town of around 7,500 souls took on metropolitan airs on September 4 of that year, when it joined other larger towns with its miniscule 15-block horsecar line. It had taken a lot of courage to invest in such an undertaking, and initially it was indeed not a success. It eventually, however, led to a rail system of some 100 miles that through metamorphosis advanced from the original horsecars to steam dummies, electric traction, and, in Chattanooga's instance, inclines and local railroad lines up to the motor coaches.
Railroads made Chattanooga what it is today. These railroads introduced people to the city, but they also brought with them war and devastation during the Civil War strife. With hostilities stilled, the railroads now introduced those who had discovered the area's inert natural beauty, and Chattanooga was soon growing by leaps and bounds. Several false starts were had in 1867 and 1872 to get a street railway in motion, but when A.J. Harris came to town from Atlanta, he was able to get the project off the ground and his Chattanooga Street Railroad Company was in formal operation on September 4, 1875. Harris's initial street railway was indeed a failure, but when Joshua H. Warner, a local banker took the reins, Warner, who can surely be titled the father of public transportation in Chattanooga, stabilized the company and it was on its way to success.
Everyone who came to Chattanooga wanted to visit beautiful Lookout Mountain. Thus, Warner's initial interest was to extend the car line the three miles distance. Slowly, in piecemeal fashion, his line crept toward its goal, and when the first incline railway was readied to the peak on March 21, 1887, his St. Elmo horsecar line had already been brought to its St. Elmo destination by the end of the December before. In quick succession, a series of other lines were soon operating. The East Ninth Street line was partially in use by late November 1886; the Carter Street line went into service on March 25, 1887; the McCallie Avenue branch via Palmetto Street opened simultaneously with the Vine Street line as far as Douglas Street on May 5th of that year; and the full extension to the East Ninth Street line to Chattanooga National Cemetery was in use late May 1887. The Vine Street line was completed its full length to the Hebrew Cemetery on June 22, 1887; the West Ninth and Grove line commenced on September 7, 1888; and what was destined to be the last horsecar extension was the short but strategic branch line from the St. Elmo line at today's Thirty-eighth Street west to the base station of Lookout Incline No. 1.
The 1880s were especially boom years for Chattanooga, years that produced foundries, factories, and mills manufacturing all sorts of merchandise that by the turn of the century earned Chattanooga the title "Dynamo of Dixie." With increasing population, Chattanooga advanced from a village to a large town that was spreading out in all directions, with the trolley lines not far behind and indeed in several instances ahead of these
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