We were intrigued by a recent Facebook post by Chattanooga and Hamilton County historian Linda Moss Mines that showed a new metal alligator sculpture beneath the recently refurbished fireman’s statue at Fountain Square across from the Hamilton County Courthouse.
We knew no story of local firemen being consumed or attacked by alligators, who are not native to these parts, so we sought the newspaper’s archives for a little help.
In 1915, 111 years ago, two alligators were in fact relocated to a fenced pond at the fireman’s statue from what was evidently a bedraggled zoological garden at East Lake Park.
Newly elected Chattanooga City Commissioner E.D. Herron, who was in charge of the department of public utilities, grounds and buildings, was so disgusted at the conditions he found upon his first inspection of the Oxley Zoo, according to an April 22, 1915, Chattanooga Daily Times story, that he said he wouldn’t be a party to such an “iniquitous fraud” and planned to dispose of the birds and animals there.