City prepares for 175th (or 199th) birthday

photo Photo of a flyer depicting Chattanooga's 150th Birthday Celebration for one dollar.

Just how old is Chattanooga, anyway?

The city is currently making plans -- the week of Nov. 8 -- to celebrate the 175th anniversary of its 1839 incorporation with a wide variety of history and culture events.

But in September 1965, the city marked its 150th birthday, meaning the city today would be 199 years old.

Why the discrepancy?

"Time, in those days, was not important," Lee Anderson, the former editor of this page, wrote in "the official Sesquicentennial Chattanooga Celebration Souvenir Program" in 1965 about the murky date in which John Ross established a crude log warehouse at the foot of Market Street in which to ply his trade business. "The date [in 1815 or 1816] is not marked in definite record."

Most likely due to that murky date, somewhere between 1965 and 2014, probably closer to 1965, somebody or somebodies decided the city should celebrate with its date of incorporation rather than the date of the establishment of the trading post.

City officials "may have been unclear on the actual date" of the founding of Ross's Landing, Lacie Stone, spokeswoman for Mayor Andy Berke, said in an email. "Either way, there is no doubt we became incorporated as a city in 1839, so it seemed appropriate to us to celebrate the occasion."

In 1965, though, Chattanooga's 150th birthday was marked with great fanfare.

Even today, on eBay, one still can purchase for $5 a commemorative, gold-colored metal coin of the city's 1965 sesquicentennial as a city.

On the obverse is an American Indian reaching out to seemingly touch a jet and includes the words "Progress," "150th Year" and "Celebration." On the reverse is The General, a locomotive engine involved in the Civil War that was then a symbol for the city, and the words "Chattanooga Sesquicentennial 1815-1865." The reverse also bears the words: "Good for 50 cents in trade at celebration headquarters on or before Sept. 16, 1965."

The souvenir program from the event includes a letter from President Lyndon Johnson and articles by Gov. Frank Clement, U.S. Rep. Bill Brock, Chattanooga Mayor Ralph Kelley and County Judge (the day's equivalent of county mayor) Chester Frost.

The 96-page book doesn't indicate why the 1815 date was chosen from which to date the city's history, though Anderson wrote that Ross with his trading post had "laid the foundation of a great city," but the 1839 date makes more sense since the Tennessee General Assembly granted the act of incorporation in December 1839.

The town had changed its name a year earlier from Ross's Landing to Chattanooga, cited often as an American Indian expression meaning "rock rising to a point."

In 1965, though, the city also was marking what the program described as "Chattanooga's greatest industrial expansion in 150 years." Investment in new and expanding industries had jumped from $34.1 million in 1963 to more than $152 million in 1964, and the city had led all other cities in the state in such growth for six years in a row.

The souvenir book also touted expansions in other areas.

Among those were a $3 million community junior college to be located northeast of Chattanooga (Chattanooga State), an educational broadcasting studio and tower (WTCI), $16 million in new construction in Hamilton County for the interstate system and the projected finish of the "Missionary Ridge project" (Ridge Cut), the completion of the $2 million-plus Hamilton County Nursing Home, development of Hamilton County Park (Chester Frost Park), the $1.5 million modernization of Memorial Auditorium, the $2.7 million improvement of Lovell Field (Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport), the continuing development of the Golden Gateway urban renewal program and the $1.75 million gymnasium at the University of Chattanooga (Maclellan Gym).

"The New Spirit of Greater Chattanooga, born in 1963, has now given way to the 'Forward March of Greater Chattanooga,'" the program gushed. "It means a brighter future for the 600,000 citizens of the Chattanooga area."

Clearly, the city wanted to celebrate at the time, and perhaps the murky Ross's Landing date -- providing a sesquicentennial -- was convenient for marketing the city's growth.

Next month's 175th anniversary celebration (www.cha175.org) offers a growing list of events such as City Hall tours, cemetery tours, public art walking tours, historic houses of worship tours, discounted attractions, concerts and a birthday celebration at Coolidge Park.

It will be a good time to put the city's history in proper perspective.

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