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Fine Early Map of Chattanooga, Drawn For Railroad Speculators
Huge hand drawn engineering map showing a substantial portion of the City of Chattanooga along the southern bank of the Tennessee River.
This is one of the earliest surviving large format non-Civil War battlefield maps of Chattanooga, predated by the 1871 Oswald Dietz Map of the city of Chattanooga, Tenn.. . . 1871 and EF Whittman's Map of Chattanooga from 1885.
The map shows Chattanooga at a very early moment in its modern development after the Civil War. The city would grow from a town of 6,093 in 1870 to 12,892 in 1800 and 29,100 in 1890.
The map locates dozens of early waterfront and other businesses, along the preliminary triangulation and plans for the creation of the East Tennessee & Alabama Railroad between Chattanooga and Stevenson, Alabama.
Among the more ambitious elements of the proposed railroad was a new bridge, to be built across the Tennessee River east of Maclellan Island. The Bridge would later appear on Chattanooga maps beginning in 1889 as part of the proposed Memphis and Charleston Railroad.
Annotation in crayon labels this map "No. 4".
The East Tennessee & Alabama Railroad
It appears that the East Tennessee & Alabama Railroad was organized in about May 1887, but failed to secure funding for construction and was never operational.
The Chattanooga Commercial of May 18, 1887 notes an application for a railroad from Chattanooga to Stevenson, Alabama was filed by applicants H.S. Chamberlain, A.S. Ochs and others, in the name of the East Tennessee and Alabama Railroad. On the same date, the Knoxville Daily Sentinel reported the establishment of the line, with a branch line up the Sequatchie Valley had been incorporated by Edward J. Sanford, Xenophon Wheeler, Hiram S. Chamberlain, Adolph S. Ochs, Robert N. Hood and Wm. Baxter. On May 21, 1887, The Journal and Tribune of Knoxville reported that the object of the company was to build a railroad from Chattanooga to Stevenson and that the route had been surveyed and work would commence immediately. On March 24, 1888, the Chattanooga Daily Times reported an interview with LC. Brewer, Chief Engineer, indicating that work would commence on the line once financing in New York had been finalized.
After March 1888, we were unable to locate any other references to the company.
Rarity
This would seem to be the only surviving example of the map and the only surviving artifact of the East Tennessee & Alabama Railroad.
