Chickamauga and Chattanooga Administrative History

CHAPTER III:
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ADMINISTRATION (continued)

B. Park Development

Park development over the years of National Park Service administration has been constant and ever-changing. During the first years of the Great Depression the park gave employment to several hundred men for three months in a clean-up program sponsored by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. [34] Perhaps the most construction was the erection of the Administration Building during the early 1930s. This structure, built of Briar Hill Stone with slate roof and with woodwork of cypress and pine, was a Public Works Project (PWA) completed by the Ray M. Lee Company of Atlanta at a cost of $53,939.92. The building contained a large reception room in the center and two wings. The north wing contained rooms for park guides, historians, and patrolmen, besides a library; the south wing contained administrative offices. [35] Other construction at the same time included raising a brick utility building north of Dyer Road, laying a 1,500-foot sewer line from the Administration Building to the Superintendent's residence and the Hitching Post, paving the grounds around the Administration Building, and building component maintenance facilities. [36] In addition, plans were drawn for completing trail location maps for Lookout Mountain, Point Park, and Chickamauga Park, [37] and development plans for Point Park and the Cravens House were in preparation. [38] The National Cemetery at Chattanooga also drew attention, and during the 1930s labor provided by the park and by CCC workers supplemented that of the cemetery staff in filling a health-menacing slough outside the cemetery's west wall, a task that required the removal of a portion of that wall. [39] Other maintenance activities during the 1930s involved oiling road surfaces and mowing historical fields in the park. [40] In 1939 a six-year master plan was adopted that envisioned the restoration of the battlefields, to embrace planting or clearing, to correct those areas deemed not representative of the battle sites of 1863 Furthermore, trails obliterated over the years were to be reopened as bridle paths and roads without historical significance were to be closed. As none of the existing historical structures in the park was present in 1863, Park Service officials proposed removing the buildings (including employee homes) and marking the sites of all original structures with bronze tablets. Only the marking of sites was accomplished, however. Interpretive exhibits were to be erected at key points along park trails. [41]

One project came to dominate all others in the late 1930s. This was the conception by Chattanoogans to build a memorial to the late Adolph S. Ochs, who had been a prime contributor to the park and community through much of his life. As principal mover behind the development of Chattanooga-Lookout Mountain Park, subsequently donated after his death to the National Park Service as an adjunct to Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Ochs deserved an appropriate memorial. A committee of citizens was formed and succeeded in enlisting support for a plan to build a museum-observatory at Point Park, a plan which Park Service authorities fully endorsed. [42] In May 1938, the Service approved the proposal. Soon after the memorial committee turned over $12,000 to the National Park Service for construction of the "Adolph S. Ochs Observatory-Museum" at Point Park. Work started in 1939 with the CCC providing much of the labor and the project under direction of architects from the Region One (Richmond) headquarters of the National Park Service. Stone for the project was transported from a location on Lookout Mountain, a few miles south of Point Park. [43] The memorial, built on the site of Linn's old photo studio, was dedicated on November 12, 1940, with Vice Chancellor Alex Guerry, University of the South, presiding, and journalism author Elmer Davis as principal speaker. [44]

Changes continued into the 1940s. In 1941 a park master plan was approved, although National Park Service Director Newton B. Drury rejected requests for building contact stations at Sherman Reservation, Orchard Knob, and Skyuka Springs, and for construction of employee residences in the park. [45] A weather station was built at the Snodgrass Tower Lookout, and the observation towers at the Bragg and DeLong Reservations were dismantled. [46] In 1942 permission was given the Southeastern Pipe Line Company of Atlanta, Georgia, to lay a subsurface line for transporting petroleum products, and in that year provisions were made to allow hay in the park to be cut and sold by the highest bidder, thus freeing park workmen for other duties. [47] And in conjunction with the war effort a scrap metal drive was held in the autumn of 1942 that netted over 205 tons, including broken historical tablets, a large number of surplus cast iron shells, and an old boiler. A proposal to scrap the metal from existing park monuments was not acted upon. [48] In 1947 a program of trimming trees and foliage to improve the vistas in the park was prepared in accordance with recommendations of regional personnel. About this time, too, recommendations were made for razing Cravens House on Lookout Mountain which had become dilapidated. Instead, however, extensive repairs were made to the structure. [49]

Substantial construction occurred at the park in the 1950s. In 1953 the John Martin Company of Chattanooga registered the low bid of $63,400 and received a contract for building a "museum wing addition" on the Administration Building. The work was completed in February of the following year. [50] Other construction involved the location of a picnic area along Sanders Road, building a parking area and foot trails at Signal Point, and completion of comfort stations there. In 1955 a Lookout Mountain Picnic Area formally opened for public use and the parking area at the Administration Building was enlarged. [51] Construction at Signal Point was finished in 1958, and a sewage disposal system was completed at Point Park by 1961. That year also witnessed repairs to the Kelly and Brotherton Houses on the Chickamauga field. [52]

Similar developments proceeded through the 1960s. In 1962 the ninety-eight-year-old "Hitching Post," a cabin across from park headquarters that years earlier had been a tea room and restaurant, was torn down and its lumber sent to build a caretaker's home at Cravens House on Lookout Mountain. New benches were placed along trails at Point Park, and a new lighting system was completed in the Ochs museum. [53] "Little by little," wrote Superintendent Cook, "this important visitor contact point is losing its jail-like appearance and [is] beginning to resemble a NPS museum." [54] In addition, parking areas at Brotherton House and Snodgrass Hill were broadened, and a footpath traced at the top of Snodgrass Hill to aid visitors. Other projects soon in progress involved construction of trailside exhibits at Signal Point and Wilder Tower and opening the Blue Beaver Hiking Trail on Lookout Mountain. [55] Tentative long-range plans in 1965 called for building a wing for exhibits on the Administration Building, a visitor center at Point Park, and a contact station at Sherman Reservation. [56] The latter place had become "a jungle, a hangout at night for teenagers," and concerned Chattanoogans urged that a ranger be stationed there on a full-time basis. [57] In 1966 construction and paving of the tour road was accomplished, and the following year the park employed Neighborhood Youth Corps workers from Chattanooga in clearing vistas, improving trails, and policing the grounds. [58]

These activities continued during the early 1970s. A "Playing Field" was planned for the area near Wilder Tower, and in 1972 removal of historical markers and cannon along Lafayette Road (U.S. Highway 27) occurred in preparation for a relocation of that route. Several more tour roads were made one-way, and traffic signs were installed. Operations in 1974 included the adaptation of the ranger residence on Lookout Mountain into an office and renewal of the cooperating agreement with the Association for Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities regarding the interpretive use of Cravens House. [59] In 1975, as part of the new General Management Plan (master plan) for the park, a transportation study began looking to improve the interpretive experience of visitors and determine feasible alternative routes for U.S. Highway 27 and its non-visitor traffic. During the year washed-out trails on Lookout Mountain underwent rehabilitation, and in 1976 the Ochs museum at Point Park was refurbished inside and out and new exhibits installed. Similar maintenance projects on the trails of Lookout Mountain continued in the early 1980s with members of the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) performing valuable service. [60]

In 1976 Superintendent Deskins filed a "Statement for Management" for Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. This document provided a synopsis of the condition of the park at the time, and ably presented the immediate challenge that it faced in the future:

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is subjected to intense recreational pressures leading to crowding and non-conforming uses which are often in direct conflict with the original purpose of the Park. It is bisected by a major U.S. Highway which is the main thoroughfare through the western portion of Georgia when traveling north to south. The remainder of the park in Tennessee, especially the outlying areas, are faced by streets, roads, residential and commercial structures. The major single unit of the Park (Chickamauga Battlefield) is constantly forced with uses incompatible with the historical theme of the area. [61]

Clearly, the park's location in a highly urbanized setting threatened its deviation from the course charted in 1890, promoting philosophical as well as practical questions regarding its direction in the future.