The Blue Goose Hollow Trail Head, which opened in August to extend the Riverwalk 3.5 miles to the base of Lookout Mountain, will take you right through Bessie Smith country.
Bessie was born in 1894 to William and Laura Smith. The family lived in a one-room shack in Blue Goose Hollow, a slum area inhabited by African-Americans and a few poor whites.
Her laborer-minister father died when Bessie was an infant, the youngest of seven children. After their mother died when Bessie was 9, her eldest sister, Viola, moved them into a tenement apartment in Tannery Flats, a little further along where the Riverwalk is today.
To support them, Viola took in laundry, and Clarence, the eldest brother, did odd jobs until 1904, when he left town to join a minstrel troupe.
Bessie completed the eighth grade while starting her entertainment career on the street corners of Chattanooga. Accompanied by her brother, Andrew, on the guitar, she sang for change that people passing by threw at them.