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
First of two parts. Read part two here.
---
Located just west of downtown Chattanooga, Cameron Hill, the mirror image of Lookout Mountain, has a rich history. Given the hill's proximity to settlements along the Tennessee River and the intersection of major trails to the south, Native Americans were certain to have used the promontory since prehistoric times as an observation point.
At the time of the Cherokee Removal in 1838, the state of Tennessee began selling the newly vacated land of the former Ross's Landing. Businessman James Whiteside purchased much of the top and east side of Lookout Mountain as well as what became Cameron Hill. He built a mansion on Lookout Mountain and an in-town home on the north side of the hill.
While visiting Philadelphia, Whiteside met artist James Cameron, a Scotsman who studied in that city and in Italy. Whiteside persuaded the artist to come to Chattanooga and helped Cameron obtain commissions. The artist's best known work was the 1859 painting of the Whiteside family on the terrace of its Lookout Mountain home.
As payment, Whiteside gave James Cameron the hill, where the family built a home and studio - and gave its name to the high ground. The remainder of Cameron Hill was covered in old growth forest. When the Civil War broke out, the disillusioned Camerons left for Philadelphia.
Chattanooga was in the hands of the Confederacy until August 1863, when Union forces under the command of Gen. John Wilder advanced on Chattanooga from the west. In response, Gen. Braxton Bragg's Confederates attempted to defend the city from a fort on Cameron Hill. The antiquated Confederate artillery failed to protect the city from the Union barrage from Stringer's Ridge. The Confederates vacated the city on Sept. 9.
Following their defeat at Chickamauga, Union troops retreated to Chattanooga to find themselves surrounded by Confederate forces controlling Lookout and Raccoon mountains, Missionary Ridge, railroad routes and the Tennessee River. During the two-month siege, the Federals relayed messages via flags on Cameron Hill to troops on Signal Mountain.
Meanwhile Union soldiers cleared the hill of trees to build a bridge across the Tennessee River. Eventually even the tree roots were stripped from the ground and used as firewood by cold, hungry soldiers.
James Whiteside died from pneumonia in 1861 after retrieving his son from a Confederate hospital. During the Union occupation his widow, Harriett, and her young children were deported north. They left most possessions behind, including the Cameron painting, which was later wrapped around a pole and shipped to Cincinnati. It was eventually returned to the Whiteside family and today hangs in the Hunter Museum of American Art.
James Cameron died in 1882 in California. His widow sued the federal government for the value of the lumber cut by Union forces and was compensated $30,000.
After the war, Harriett Whiteside began re-establishing control of her late husband's estate. In 1886, a plot of residential lots on the hill was sold at auction. Prominent Chattanoogans, according to The Chattanooga Times, built "handsome, stylish homes on the slopes of the hill, making the area one of Chattanooga's most fashionable neighborhoods."
In 1888, a group of investors purchased the top of the hill. They built Chattanooga's first incline and then a casino and beer garden. An early photograph shows the casino on the top of the still-denuded hill with homes on its slopes. In 1891, of group of citizens tore up the incline tracks. The casino, which was never popular with city residents, soon went bankrupt and closed.
In 1905, the city named a park on Cameron Hill in honor of Union Gen. Henry Boynton. A veteran of the battles of Missionary Ridge and Chickamauga, Boynton received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the ridge and in the 1890s became chairman of the committee that oversaw the development of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.
The 10-acre Boynton Park featured a concert pavilion, flowering cherry trees, roses, irises and violets as well as Civil War cannons and markers. It was the site of Fourth of July fireworks displays as well as romantic strolls, picnics and outings. Trees were planted on the still barren hillsides, thanks to City Alderman Isaac Mansfield, who did the planting at his own expense.
By the early 20th century, Cameron Hill was a jewel in the heart of Chattanooga - an elegant neighborhood with a lovely park.
- Coming next Sunday: The changes that led to the Cameron Hill of today.
Gay Moore is the author of Chattanooga's St. Elmo and Chattanooga's Forest Hills Cemetery. Visit Chattahistorcalassoc.org for more information.