Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
Before construction of the Tennessee Valley Authority flood control system, the region frequently experienced spring floods. One of the worst occurred in March 1917.
Heavy rains and snow melt in east Tennessee and western North Carolina caused the Tennessee River to rise from Knoxville into Alabama. On March 5, Chattanooga River Bureau observer L.M. Pindell reported the river was at 39.3 feet and rising at about two-tenths of a foot per hour. He predicted an eventual rise to 45 feet (flood stage was 33 feet.) Areas wast of Missionary Ridge from 16th Street south were already underwater.
Mayor Jesse Littleton called on 50 citizens to lead the emergency effort. They quickly formed committees, divided responsibilities and went to work. Police and firemen assisted those fleeing the flood. Associated Charities moved into the mayor's office. Schools, churches and empty buildings opened to house 200 families already displaced. Church committees organized to feed them.
By nightfall, the city was nearly surrounded by rising water. Eight hundred families had relocated, using every available wagon, truck and boat. In accordance with segregation laws, Almira Steele opened the Steele Home for Colored Children to black refugees. Black schools were also opened. Ambulances moved the sick, including eight families with measles to hospitals. A woman gave birth as flood waters crept into her home. As families fled, they took both furniture and livestock. Police and firemen aided in the effort to save precious belongings. The basement of Orchard Knob School held the neighborhood chickens. One farmer drove his dairy herd up Missionary Ridge.
The morning of March 6 brought freezing temperatures. The river was at 43.5 feet and rising. The predicted crest was 46.6 feet. City sewers backed up. Basements flooded. Over 50 percent of the city was flooded. The area from Main Street to the Georgia line was under water. Women cried as they left flooding homes. One woman saw her piano floating in her parlor as she and her husband rowed away. Some families were forced to evacuate twice. Those seeking refuge in schools moved to upper floors.
Most citizens took the crisis in stride. The Orange Grove School housed a dozen families, along with their household items, pets and chickens. Churches sent food and bedding. The refugees fried bacon and shared a coffee pot. Preacher Tom Black decided to "get busy and have me a meeting tonight. The folks can't get away, they'll jest have to listen."
Many people climbed Cameron Hill to view the devastation. Williams and Chattanooga Islands, as well as Moccasin Bend, were submerged in swirling, dirty, yellow water. Dead livestock and buildings floated by. Industrial areas south and west of the city were inundated. Ferger Place was the only dry spot south of Main. Warner Park and the baseball stadium were almost completely underwater. On the north side, the river climbed the high banks at the foot of the new Market Street Bridge.
St. Elmo Mayor Findley Seagle ordered his lumber yard workers to make as many wagons as possible. Fearing the town would be cut off, Seagle arranged for a Southern Railway train to help with the evacuation. Though forbidding sightseers, street cars and trains continued to run.
At 7 a.m. March 7, the river crested at 47.7 feet. By noon, the water began to recede. The city took three days to drain. Six thousand were homeless. Every public building held refugees. City Hall sheltered 575 people. Remarkably, there was no looting and only a few boat thefts. There was one fatality.
Groups across the city helped during the crisis. Girls made sandwiches. Boys made flatboats. Boy Scouts helped the Humane Society rescue pets and livestock. Several boys in a skiff rescued six pigs. Merchants delivered food and coal, while other businesses offered vehicles of every description. A temporary hospital opened, as Erlanger filled to capacity. The Mizpah Congregation's Embroidery Circle made clothing. Elks Club members offered their services.
The Chattanooga Times, the only official source of information, continued to print throughout the emergency.
On March 8, the health committee began a thorough cleaning of the city and its suburbs. Damage was estimated at $300,000 ($6 million in today's dollars). During the height of the flood, a committee raised $25,000 for relief.
Several weeks after the crisis, 74 committee members and volunteers calling themselves the "Stick-to-Its" met to turn in their police badges, rubber boots and slickers. Their job was finished.
Gay Morgan Moore is the author of "Forest Hills Cemetery" and "St. Elmo." For more, visit Chatta.historicalassoc.org.