Fifty years ago this week, Chattanooga city commissioners were discussing a new downtown park that would be the first such major project for the area in decades.
Last week, justifiably proud of its status as the first National Park City in the country, city leaders again were discussing a downtown park.
In 1976, the subject in question was what later became known as Miller Park. In 2026, it is the revitalization of Ross’s Landing, which was little more than a dirty, glass-strewn, urine-smelling, cobblestoned edge of the Tennessee River 50 years ago.
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For both parks, news articles described how their completion would be accomplished with a variety of public and private funds — what became known as and is still sometimes referred to as the “Chattanooga Way.”