Robert Hale, from Jonesboro, Ga., looks at downtown Chattanooga while taking a break from a living history demonstration at Point Park atop Lookout Mountain.Unlike most small and medium-sized cities in the Southeast, Chattanooga has a rather varied history, according to Marlene Payne, deputy director of the Chattanooga History Center.
“There is layer upon layer here,” she said. “From the Indian Removal, to the Civil War, to the Industrial movement and then the Renaissance to clean up both the environment and the waterfront. And that’s just broad-brush.”
Archaeologists have documented American Indian habitation here dating back 10,000 to 12,000.
The earliest residents used the Tennessee River as a trail carved through the Cumberland Plateau to move from coastal lands into the Middle Tennessee, Kentucky and the Midwest, Payne said.
When English colonists pushed into the area, they quickly whittled the land of the Creeks and Cherokees to a fraction of the original 100,000-plus square miles.