Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
Second of two parts. Read part one here
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In the 1950s, Chattanooga, like many other cities, sought to revitalize infrastructure and housing neglected during the Depression and World War II. The federal government encouraged cities to demolish older, run-down neighborhoods and business areas to make way for urban development and highways.
By the mid-1950s urban renewal and construction of a national interstate highway system were underway.
Originally the planned interstate highway bypassed Chattanooga. Realizing the interstate's impact on economic development, Chattanoogans lobbied to change the route. The highway department agreed, but the price was a dramatic alteration of the west side of the city — including Cameron Hill.
In November 1955, Mayor P.R. Olgiati announced the Westside Redevelopment Plan, which included 407 acres bound by the Tennessee River plus Chestnut, Carter and West Main streets. There was little opposition except to the Cameron Hill plan, which required destruction of all structures and Boynton Park.
Rumors flew as it became evident a portion of Cameron Hill would be topped to make way for the freeway. Olgati attempted to quash speculation that Cameron Hill would be leveled to the Chestnut Street grade by claiming only 15 feet would be removed.
In his proposal, the mayor asserted the west side required more in city services than was collected in property taxes. Many of the previously grand homes stood empty, while others were divided into apartments. Furthermore 70 percent of the structures were sub-standard, and 65 percent lacked proper sanitary facilities. The proposal required relocation of 605 families, most of whom had incomes of less than $2,500 per year. All families and businesses were to be moved by June 1, 1958.
News Free Press associate editor Kinchen Exum recalled in a 1969 article that when the plans were announced, Hamilton County Historian Zella Armstrong "rushed in to the offices of this newspaper breathless and almost in a state of apoplexy declaring she would throw herself in front of the first bulldozer. Instead, she organized the Cameron Hill Association."
Armstrong bombarded the newspapers with articles condemning the plans for Cameron Hill, citing its Civil War history, historic homes and Boynton Park as well as its beauty and tourist potential. The newspapers received letters — both pro and con. Almost everyone had an opinion. Even Ulysses S. Grant III, the president of the American Planning and Civic Association, wrote to Mayor Olgiati in protest.
The Cameron Hill Historical Society, led by Armstrong and Sophia Long, included a number of prominent citizens. They met frequently with Olgiati and city officials. The mayor reiterated the need for removing blighted areas as well as balancing historical preservation with economic growth. During one meeting, Armstrong reportedly told the officials, "If you take off the top of Cameron Hill, Chattanooga will rise up and hang you all."
The Society proposed a city-wide referendum and filed a lawsuit seeking to buy time to submit an alternative plan; both failed. The federal government's offer of $10 million, matched by $250,000 from the city, stipulated the reconfiguration of Cameron Hill to allow for urban renewal and highway construction.
Actually the federal government had quietly purchased much of the west side property before the project started. Eventually about 150 feet of the hill, the height of a 15-story building, was removed. The dirt was used for fill along the interstate and other low-lying areas.
Demolition of the homes and removal of the land began in early 1957 and continued for several years. Sophia Long spent the first day of demolition standing on the hill in protest, but no public uprising or hangings occurred. Boynton Park's cannons and plaques were moved to the Chickamauga Battlefield.
For a number of years, Cameron Hill sat denuded of trees, and the remaining houses stood vacant. In 1973 Cameron-Oxford Associates purchased the top of the hill and began construction of the Cameron Hill Apartments. A suit brought by the Moccasin Bend Association to halt construction of the 254-unit complex failed in federal court. The apartments opened in 1978. The cannons and plaques returned to the re-established two-acre Boynton Park.
The apartments dominated until the hill was purchased by BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee in 2004. Completed in 2007, the 950,000-square-foot headquarters is home to more than 4,900 employees.
Beleaguered Mayor Olgiati asserted, "We cannot make progress for the betterment of the city and its residents without stepping on some people's toes." Indeed, maintaining a balance between preservation and development continues to be the source of discussion and controversy.
Gay Moore is the author of several books, including "Chattanooga's Forest Hills Cemetery" and "Chattanooga's St. Elmo." For additional information, contact chattahistoricasso.org.