When Karen Stone was a young girl, her mother was a dance teacher and her father was the president of the Walden’s Ridge Civic League.
Stone, now 80, remembers dancing on the stage of the Walden’s Ridge Civic League building on Fairmount Pike, which for decades was the shake-shingled home to the Mountain Opry.
The Mountain Opry, a bluegrass show that rented the venue for its weekly performances for 40 years, shut down during COVID, and a new version of the Opry now operates at the nearby Bachman Community Center on Anderson Pike.
The change of locations, which left the old property without a signature tenant, spurred a grassroots effort to restore and revive the Walden’s Ridge Civic League building, which dates to the early 20th century. In 1921, mountain folks — mostly miners and farmers — banded together to build the little 200-seat auditorium next to a since-demolished community school.
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Building the auditorium in the 1920s was very slow and very hard work, Stone said.
“People would contribute a bag of nails or some lumber or labor or roofing,” she said.
After losing the Mountain Opry in 2020, and nearing its 100th anniversary, the fate of the property was uncertain. Besides the auditorium, the property includes several smaller buildings, a pavilion, a playground and a soccer field, which together comprise a small community park.
“We had this shell of a building, with nobody to operate it,” said Stone, who eventually gathered some friends and began to reinvigorate the Walden’s Ridge Civic League, which owns the 3.6-acre property.
Why reclaim the property?
“The historic value of it,” Stone said in an interview. “For heaven sakes, I grew up on this property. I just love the building and the space — you know, the heritage.”
A historic preservation move is underway to have the property listed on the National Registry of History Places, Stone said.
Mark Dwyer, 69, remembers riding his bike from nearby Wilson Avenue as a kid to attend events at the civic league, 2501 Fairmount Pike.
Dwyer, who founded Walden Plumbing, is now the president of the Walden’s Ridge Civic League, which has grown to 200 members and hosts four big yearly events. The big yearly fundraiser is a barbecue competition called Smoke on the Mountain held on the second weekend in October. Last year, the event raised more than $6,000 to help keep the lights on at the center.
“I got interested in the building because it’s deteriorating a lot,” Dwyer said. “We’ve got songbirds in the ceiling and the walls. … I got involved with the civic league because I didn’t want to see the building go to h—.”
The league, not Hamilton County and not the town of Walden, own the property, and many citizens would like to see it returned to its original purpose as a community gathering place in the heart of Walden, a small mountain municipality with fewer than 2,000 residents.
Besides the annual barbecue competition, the building hosts an a yearly storytelling event and a summer birthday bash. It is also available to be rented for family birthday parties, weddings and meetings.
Besides the birds taking residence in the ceiling, the 100-plus-year-old building’s siding is weathered, termites have invaded some of the walls and the compressor in the heating and cooling system has begun to thump. But with the help of volunteers, event sponsors and donors plans are being laid to renovate the building.
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White oak logs have been donated from several sources and milled into one-inch-thick siding that will reclad the outside of the civic league building, which is badly worn due to sun exposure. The boards are drying out in a dehumidification kiln in the basement.
The civic league advocates are also on track to replace the 200 ancient theater seats in the auditorium with newer seating donated by the folks overseeing the current renovation of the Tivoli Theatre in downtown Chattanooga.
One day the Walden’s Ridge Civic League may be even grander than old-time residents like Stone and Dwyer remember it.
The American flags in the auditorium are so old that they only have 48 stars.
In a nod to nostalgia, the flags will not be replaced.
Life Stories is published on Mondays. Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.