Simply Smart Travel
By Jeff and Virginia Orenstein
Reliving History In Chattanooga: The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and Civil War Battlefields are Highlights
Reliving History In Chattanooga: The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and Civil War Battlefields are Highlights Note: As leisure travel is not yet recommended during COVID-19 restrictions, this column is a reprise and updating of a 2017 visit to Chattanooga, Before traveling to Chattanooga, please check out https://www.visitchattanooga.com/blog/ post/clean-and-safe-guide/. Currently, the city is largely open but masks and other safety measures are required in public places. The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum trains are currently running.
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hattanooga, a medium-sized city in southeastern Tennessee, is situated on the Tennessee River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. A visit there is an opportunity to experience history. Few American cities are as closely tied to railroads and the Civil War as Chattanooga. An enjoyable exploration of this Tennessee Valley town shows that railroads and the civil war have defined what Chattanooga was, and still have a major influence today. The Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad reached Chattanooga in 1854. A decade later, the town’s railroads would be embroiled in the U.S. Civil War, both a strategic pipeline and target of the battle between North and South. Battles in and around Chattanooga were decisive in the defeat of the Confederacy and the eventual end of the U.S. Civil War and railroads played a prominent part in both. When the war ended, the railroads in the region including Chattanooga were in shambles both physically and financially. As the 19th century progressed, recovery in this “gateway to the South” proceeded apace and brought a railroad revival that carried commerce once again to the growing city, and linked it with Atlanta and points north.
Delivered in 1904, “retired” after a half-century of freight hauling, Southern Railroad #630 now hauls passengers on scenic excursions at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. Credit: Jeff Orenstein
Chattanooga in the 1860s, a visit to the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Visitor’s Center or Lookout Mountain is a must-do for Chattanooga visitors in search of history. Contemporary Chattanooga is an interesting city to visit with a bustling and revitalized downtown riverfront and an excellent aquarium, a good art museum and, of course, the Chattanooga Choo Choo complex named after the 1940s song made famous by Glen Miller. (Smart Travel page 34)
Today, the city, still laced with rail lines, celebrates its heritage with a first-rate operating railroad museum and numerous civil war battlefield monuments, and National Parks interpretative centers and historical sites. The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, 6 miles from downtown, operates more than 100 year old steam locomotives pulling vintage passenger cars and gives riders a realistic taste what it must have been like in the golden age of railroading. One of its routes tunnels under Missionary Ridge, site of a major Civil War Battle. To get a good sense of the carnage that took place around
The Visitor’s Center at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in nearby Fort Oglethorpe is rich with interactive displays and interpretations of Chattanooga-area Civil War battles. Credit: Jeff Orenstein www.SeniorSpectrumNewspapers.com // April 2021
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