News of a proposed 49,000-square-foot supermarket, fuel station and retail project on the Lines Orchids property at the junction of Timesville Road and Taft Highway in Walden stirs many memories.
Some may recall that Adolph Ochs, owner of both The Chattanooga Times and The New York Times, purchased 256 acres on Walden’s Ridge and named the area Timesville. He advertised in 1889 that a one year’s subscription to The Chattanooga Times would bring a lottery ticket for a 25-foot by 40-foot tract of land, which was advertised to have a spectacular view of Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain and Tennessee River. Joe Petrie in his 2010 article “Mountain Remembrances” in the Chattanooga Area Historical Association Journal added that “Perhaps with a tall observation tower this could be true. Subscriptions poured in from all over the country. There were 1,000 of these ‘lucky’ winners. In the 1950s and 60s visitors still came into Leo Brown’s Hardware Store on Taft Highway trying to locate their parents’ dream property.”
Others may recall that coal mining came to the Timesville Road area after the Civil War. A State of Tennessee Department of Conservation report stated that coal mining was once very important in the Fairmount Quadrangle (an area of western Hamilton County and southeastern Sequatchie Counties) and included more than 40 mines or prospects but that the industry had dwindled at the time of the report in 1963 to four small active mines.
“Most of the mines are concentrated around the headwaters of Middle Creek southwest of Fairmount [behind the Lines Orchids tract], and just east of Hicks Branch. Most of the mines were small, employed only a few men and held only a few acres of coal,” the report said.
Petrie noted considerable coal mining was done on Walden’s Ridge in the early years, but small mines started closing in the mid 1950s. Old mine shafts remained in Fairmount, Walden, Timesville, Birnam Wood and Hidden Brook subdivisions. Jim Douthat in “Along the Pike” wrote that Timesville Road was originally known as “Smokie Road” due to the many burning slag fires and home coal fires along the thoroughfare.