Remember when downtown Chattanooga was home to 9-foot-tall ostriches and Wild West shows?
Well, of course you don’t. Not unless you are 120 years old.
Long before there was a Riverbend Festival, or an Iron Man Triathlon, or a Moon River music festival, Chattanooga was known for its Spring Festival, a prosaic name for a rip-roaring, turn-of-the-20th-century street fair.
People could sip whiskey while watching high-dive acts, aerial cyclists and couples getting married for show. One report from the 1903 Spring Festival mentions 9-foot-tall ostriches and a “fancy-riding” cavalry group from nearby Camp Thomas in Chickamauga, Georgia, as part of the festivities.
The Spring Festival, featured in today’s “Remember When, Chattanooga?” photo, began in 1898 and continued for about a decade, according to news reports of the day. Dates of the event were typically four or five days in early May.