We all fail from time to time, so it’s encouraging to know that it happens to even the best and the brightest. Such was the case with former Chattanooga Times and New York Times owner Adolph Ochs and his dream city, Timesville.
Ochs unleashed his idea at the dawn of the final decade of the 19th century, announcing his intention of establishing a new community, Timesville, “on the plateau on top of Walden’s Ridge on the line of the Chattanooga Western Railroad,” according to an ad in the Feb. 20, 1890, edition of The Chattanooga Daily Times. The land was described as a “splendid tract,” more than 2,000 feet above the sea and 1,500 feet above Chattanooga.
The community would include 1,000 lots, 25 feet by 130 feet, and the best part was anyone could put their name in contention to own one of them simply by purchasing a $1 year’s subscription to the Chattanooga Weekly Times. Each subscriber would be given a numbered receipt, with each receipt entered into a lottery under the supervision of “a committee of leading men of the city of Chattanooga,” according to the ad.
The ad itself was headlined “Have a Mansion in the Sky!” The drawing was set for July 1, 1890, and another Times ad in June 1890 reminded readers who hadn’t bought their $1 subscription that “if you let days slip away without attending to it, you will regret it but once, and that will be all the time.”