Sixty years ago this week, members of the Red Bank and White Oak communities saw the sign, and it opened their eyes. So, four months later, they voted to make a change.
Actually, what Red Bank and White Oak residents saw was a future problem that had been flagged by state officials, who informed their city counterparts that the municipality’s full name at the time, Red Bank-White Oak, would not fit on freeway signs and requested the city consider shortening it.
In response, the City Commission on July 19, 1966, heard and approved the first of three readings for legislation that would put a referendum on the ballot that November to shorten the town’s name to Red Bank, according to the next day’s edition of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, then the city’s afternoon newspaper.
City Manager Lowell Bishop said he had spent time surveying members of the community and found that residents favored the change by a 3-to-1 margin, the News-Free Press reported.
The name change came 11 years after Red Bank-White Oak officially incorporated, a development that was also motivated by the state.