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The city has dusted itself off and dressed up for company with a great art district, museums and historical sites all around.
By RICH STECK and JUDI JANOFSKY
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 26, 2002
Think "Chattanooga" and you might remember bandleader Glenn Miller's 1941 hit Chattanooga Choo Choo -- the world's first gold record. Or you might think "Civil War" -- for the historic battles that moved the Union toward ultimate victory. But think "vacation destination?"
Once a smog-laden metropolis spiraling into oblivion, Chattanooga has enjoyed a renaissance that turned it into what U.S. News & World Report has called one of the world's six "smart cities that work." Through the efforts of a 10-year, public/private-funded project, the city has been cleaned up and reborn from EPA-dubbed "dirtiest city in America" to a family-oriented jewel on Tennessee's eastern border.
It is the home of the world's largest freshwater aquarium, an unusual hands-on children's museum, Civil War museums and battlefields, and an arts district filled with galleries, museums, restaurants and gardens. Other Chattanooga treasures: a lovely, 22-acre river walk, an African-American museum, a wildlife center and the world's steepest passenger railway, almost 73 degrees straight up -- or down.
Famous Rock City Gardens (remember "See Rock City" painted on hundreds of barns next to highways in the eastern United States?), Ruby Falls and Lookout Mountain attractions are only 15 minutes from downtown.
The focal point of Chattanooga's revitalization is the $45-million Tennessee Aquarium, a self-guided journey tracing the Tennessee River from a little mountain stream in the Appalachian woods, down to the Mississippi Delta and on to the great rivers of Africa, South America, Siberia and Asia.
During their journey, visitors travel through two living forests and a 60-foot rock canyon. They view about 9,000 living animals, swimming in 400,000 gallons of water or flying, crawling and slithering in environments duplicating their natural habitats.
Near the aquarium are parks filled with historic artifacts, a beautifully restored 1895 carousel (and a school for wannabe merry-go-round animal carvers), and fun things for youngsters, including a jump-on-in fountain with sculptured animal sculptures squirting water at kids who dash through the fountain's ankle-deep depths.
Equally fun is the Creative Discovery Museum, an opportunity for children to touch reality in the worlds of art, paleontology and technology by digging for dinosaur fossils, painting a picture, making melodic noise in a music studio or discovering how stuff works in an inventor's workshop.
Linking the city and its riverside parks is a 108-year-old bridge, restored and converted into a linear park spanning the Tennessee River. Now said to be the world's longest pedestrian bridge, it attracts a stream of people moving between the city and the romance of its riverside.
On the city side of the river, a beautifully landscaped walkway leads to the Bluff View Art District. Anchored on a cliff high above the river by the impressive facade of the Hunter Museum of American Art, the area is also home to the Bluff View Inn and an intriguing collection of entertaining restaurants, shops, galleries, studios and gardens.
The Hunter Museum, once the mansion of Coca-Cola magnate George Thomas Hunter, was built in 1904 and now houses works by American artists such as Mary Cassatt, Andrew Wyeth, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and sculptor Duane Hanson.
One of the more engaging attractions on the bluff is the Houston Museum of Decorative Arts, which displays an outstanding collection of 18th to 20th century glass and ceramics. The pieces were collected by Anna Safley Houston, better known as "Crazy Annie."
Married nine times, Houston lived the later years of her life in poverty, refusing to sell any of her museum-quality pieces even to pay for food and medical care. When she died in 1951, she left the collection (which reportedly contained more than 15,000 pitchers) to the citizens of Chattanooga.
Unfortunately, in the 10 years it took to find a permanent home for the pieces, almost a third had been broken or stolen. What's left today is still a massive -- and priceless -- 300-year history of glass objects d'art.
Chattanooga is steeped in history: those Civil War battlefields and museums, an African-American Museum that traces heritage in art and artifact from grass hut and Ethiopian temple to slavery and today's heroes. There is a special tribute to "Empress of the Blues" Bessie Smith.
The city also has some famous tourist attractions from the past 60 years.
For more than 60 years, the words "See Rock City" painted on about 900 barns in the Southeast, was the primary marketing tool for a rocky garden created atop Lookout Mountain just six miles from downtown Chattanooga.
Rock City is a jumble of boulders and paths weaving throughout natural rock formations resulting from the volcanic explosions that created the mountain millions of years ago. Beautiful gardens nestle along the paths and in open terraces. On a clear day, seven states can be seen from Lover's Leap, at the lip of a sheer drop hundreds of feet above the valley below.
Near Rock City Gardens, but about 1,000 feet below the mountain top, is Ruby Falls, a 145-foot waterfall whose source has never been discovered but whose cascade has been a major tourist attraction for nearly 70 years.
In a cavern whose temperature never varies from 58 degrees, visitors walk where Indians, Civil War troops and even outlaws sought safety and refuge. Today, special lighting reveals a fantasy of rock formations resembling angel's wings, an elephant's foot, even the tail end of a donkey. With a roar and a constant blast of wind, the waterfall plunges into a shallow crystal pool before seeping back into the rock on its voyage to the Tennessee River.
History comes alive at Point Park on top of Lookout Mountain, overlooking one of the decisive battlefields of the Civil War. Visitors can stand where Gen. Ulysses S. Grant stood in 1863, with the Tennessee Valley spread out below, and imagine the terrible struggle of soldiers under constant bombardment trying to reach the mountain's strategic summit.
For a realistic overview, a museum at the Point features a dramatic 3-D electronic battlefield map, with 5,000 miniature soldiers, hundreds of lights and a sound track narration describing the "Battle Above the Clouds" that changed the course of the Civil War.
An exciting way up or down the mountain is aboard the Incline Railway near Point Park. With a grade of 72.7 degrees near the top, it's the world's steepest passenger railway and has been thrilling passengers since its construction 106 years ago.
A short drive away are the rolling woodlands of Chickamauga/Chattanooga National Military Park, America's first and largest military park. It is a tribute to the 34,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the area. Bronze plaques describe their deadly skirmishes. Standing here and reading the plaques (or listening to narrative cassettes), visitors begin to experience the determination and desperation of the men fighting and dying at Chickamauga.
History of a more recent vintage chugs through the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, with its collection of restored rail cars and steam engines. Cars include the sleeper in which Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis cavorted with Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, plus famous locomotives, dining cars and business titans' private cars.
Trains still travel over four bridges and through a tunnel, under historic Missionary Ridge, on a six-mile route to a huge turntable where the locomotive is turned around for the trip back to Chattanooga.
There is direct and connecting air service between Chattanooga and the Tampa Bay area. It is about 600 miles by car.
STAYING THERE: Many visitors to Chattanooga enjoy the Bluff View Art District's quiet environment and stay in one of the Bluff View Inn's 16 antique-furnished rooms in three restored, turn-of-the-century homes. Amenities include fireplaces, balconies and sitting rooms, full breakfasts and a bocce court overlooking the river.
There are also several hotels in the heart of Chattanooga's exciting new downtown. Easily the most unusual is the Chattanooga Choo Choo/Holiday Inn. It's a 360-room tribute to the song and the millions of travelers who passed through the city's grand terminal when 68 trains arrived and departed Chattanooga every day.
The huge terminal, beautifully restored, is now the hotel's lobby and reception area, leading to the original boarding platforms, cleverly converted into gardens, restaurants, an al fresco dining area, gift shops and a model-railroad museum. Best of all, several tracks support parlor cars restored to their Victorian elegance and offering nostalgic rooms for a night.
Near the parlor cars is the hotel's gourmet restaurant, housed in an impeccably restored dining car, offering meals with all the silver, linen and crystal pomp and grandeur of train travel's original first-class experience.
-- Rich Steck & Judi Janofsky are freelance writers living in Roswell, Ga.
Contact the following:
Chattanooga Convention & Visitors Bureau: call toll-free 1-800-322-3344 or go to the Web site www.chattanoogafun.com.
Tennessee Aquarium: toll-free 1-800-262-0695; www.TennesseeAquarium.org.
Creative Discovery Museum: (423) 756-2738; www.cdmfun.org.
Hunter Museum of American Art: (423) 267-0968; www.huntermuseum.org.
Houston Museum of Decorative Arts: (423) 267-7176; www.chattanooga.net/houston.
Bluff View Art District and Inn: toll-free 1-800-725-8338; www.bluffviewartdistrict.com.
Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park: (706) 866-9241; www.nps.gov/chch.
Battles for Chattanooga Museum: (423) 821-2812.
Rock City: (706) 820-2531; www.seerockcity.com.
Ruby Falls: (423) 821-2544; www.rubyfalls.com.
Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum: (423) 894-8028; www.tvrail.com.
Tennessee Wildlife Center: (423) 821-1160; www.tnwildlifecenter.org.
Chattanooga Choo Choo/Holiday Inn: toll-free 1-800-872-2529; www.choochoo.com.