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
Sophia Scholze Long campaigned to preserve the beauty and history of Chattanooga long before such ideas were fashionable.
Sophia's parents, Robert and Gertrude King Scholze, who were both born in Germany, arrived in Chattanooga in 1870. Joining Chattanooga's post-Civil War industrial boom, Robert established the Scholze Tannery on South Broad Street. As his business prospered, the couple built a stately home on Wauhatchie Pike in St. Elmo.
Known as a successful businessman as well as for his generosity, Robert purchased a debt-ridden Lutheran church (behind today's Choo-Choo) and returned it debt free to the congregation. In the 1890s, when Hamilton County was unable to provide the funds, he furnished the money to build a school in St. Elmo. Gertrude later gave a summer home on Walden's Ridge, "Three Oaks," to the Vine Street Orphanage and also helped build a children's wing at the Pine Breeze Tuberculosis Sanatorium.
Born into the Scholze family of six in 1883, Sophia married land developer Sim Perry Long in 1912. The couple had five children (and 16 grandchildren) and raised them at their attractive home on East Dallas Road.
Designed by Sophia with an English cottage theme, Longholm's interior was decorated with murals painted by Sale Creek native and Chicago Art Institute-trained Robert Patterson. The artist depicted scenes in the dining room from Chattanooga history including the John Ross House, the view from Signal Point before European settlement, Market Street in 1864, and Lula Lake and Falls. Patterson painted scenes in the nursery from Peter Pan and other children's stories.
Sophia created and tended the home's extensive, violin-shaped garden. Termed a "garden amphitheater," it was featured in the July 1934 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Open to the public on Easter Sundays, the garden was the site of parties, weddings, and Girls Preparatory School's May Day events.
Sophia was president of the Riverview Garden Club and served as the president of the Tennessee Federation of Garden Clubs. Like her parents, she was known for her philanthropy, supporting the symphony and opera associations and serving as president of the Chattanooga Music Club. She also gave to the Children's Home and the First Presbyterian Church, where she was a lifelong member.
However, it was not until the 1950s when Sophia became a leading advocate for preserving the landscape and history of Chattanooga.
Moccasin Bend, with its extensive acreage, was the site of ancient Native American settlements as well as a Union encampment during the Civil War. Numerous efforts had been made since the early 1900s to preserve and industrialize the land. The collapse of a national park effort in 1953 led to new attempts to industrialize the Bend - and the formation of the preservationist-oriented Moccasin Bend Association.
One of its most active members, Sophia brought to Chattanooga several nationally recognized urban planners to develop plans for the historic peninsula. She served as president of the association when it received the deed of ownership to the Bend "on behalf of the citizens of Hamilton County." Sophia's efforts in many ways helped pave the way for the Moccasin Bend National Archeological District becoming part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 2003.
Cameron Hill had been the site of Union cannons defending Chattanooga during the Civil War and a premier residential neighborhood by the 1880s. In 1957, the city government moved to demolish the homes, lop off about 150 feet of the hill and use the dirt to construct a freeway. Sophia and a number of like-minded citizens formed the Cameron Hill Historical Association and called for a referendum.
Many citizens opposed the destruction of Cameron Hill. She again brought in urban planners to explain the historical and tourist value of the site, but it was obvious by 1961 that the federal government, which owned most of the property, and the city were determined to move ahead with the project. In a last-ditch effort, Sophia stood for a day in front of the bulldozers, temporarily halting the destruction of Cameron Hill.
In 1968, she was honored by the Chattanooga Area Historical Association "for her unceasing efforts on behalf of local historical preservation." The resolution stated, "She has been vocal when many of us were silent". showing "rare courage, sacrificing personal interests to further local preservation of state and national importance."
Sophia Long died on Jan. 2, 1970.
Gay Moore is the author of "Chattanooga's Forest Hills Cemetery" and "Chattanooga's St. Elmo." For more information contact chattahistoricalassoc.org.