(Editor’s note: Last in a series)
We’ve heard much over the last few months about how important Moccasin Bend National Park is, and how unwise it would be for the state to build a new hospital there. What we’ve heard is true enough. The national park is, indeed, important. Building a new hospital there is, likewise, a terrible idea. These are facts, and as such they should be clear. But no one has articulated the true crux of the problem. As poor ideas go, the state’s plan to keep the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute on the peninsula could hardly be worse. It represents an egregious misunderstanding of the Bend’s historical contents and geography, and of its historical and sacred significance, particularly the degree to which that significance imbues the entire Bend, including the proposed building site. Quintessential political overreach. Heedless to common sense, existing federal designations and established congressional intention, the state continues its march towards spoiling one of Chattanooga’s richest treasures before it has had a true chance to be appreciated.
State officials think that the area they have selected for the new hospital is “tucked away” and “remote” on the Bend because they are thinking of state’s own remaining piece of property there, not what may adjoin it that is already in the national park. They think that if standard archaeological survey/testing on the small hospital site does not in itself appear to be of national-level significance, they will be free to build there. But that issue was fought and resolved long ago, and that is why the National Historic Landmark encompasses the entire lower Moccasin Bend and its archaeological riches, not just bits and pieces of it.
Far from being “tucked away,” the state-selected location for the new hospital will be in the middle of the park as it was always meant to be. In 2003, Congress determined the park should ultimately be a single contiguous unit, free from the patchwork of state, city and county inholdings (i.e., the city golf course, the city/county police firing range, and the outdated state mental health hospital). At the time, as a path of least resistance, Congress felt the inholdings would be phased out gradually, relying on the word of their state, city and county partners. Unfortunately, these inholdings in the park have caused turmoil and damage ever since.
Most importantly, the state’s new hospital site is unquestionably adjacent to, overlooking, and possibly even within, the most important and sacred resource already inside the official park boundary.