Greetings, Chattanooga! Hamilton Bush, your resident history hound, is here again with delightful tidbits of local lore. Seems the big news around our fair city these days is the long-awaited announcement that an automotive manufacturer is coming. Volkswagen will be locating its North American assembly plant at the Enterprise South Industrial Park. Now, Old Hamilton is as thrilled as anybody in town could be. So, a hearty willkomen to the automaker which has already given us the Beetle, Thing, Vanagon, Scirocco, Jetta, and Passat. Volkswagen has gone out of its way to become involved in the life of our city, what with bringing in new models of vehicles like the CC luxury sedan and allowing our folks to road test them.
So, the work on Volkswagen’s $1 billion investment at Enterprise South has begun. We, as the good local citizenry, must now seize the opportunities before and – to paraphrase the title of a bestselling book from a few years back – raise our status from that of a good city to a great city! Now, going from good to great can be a difficult thing. Author Jim Collins says in Good to Great that good is actually the enemy of great! What, say I? Think about it. Settling for good when we have the opportunity for great ist ausser Frage stehen. (This is the best your faithful scribe can do with German for “out of the question” until he enrolls in language classes at Chattanooga State next semester).
In the near future, we will be evaluating, considering, and responding to a number of issues and opportunities. As far as we have come in the last quarter century, so much lies before us. Old Hamilton, for one, believes our best days are ahead.
Dear Hamilton Bush,
Like many other local residents, I have become caught up in the excitement surrounding the VW announcement! Having grown up in Tyner, I have lived close to what is now Enterprise South Industrial Park my entire life. Its current use is not what was going on there when it was the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant, but I’m really not sure about the story of the place. Can you fill in the blanks?
Sincerely,
Baffled on Bonny Oaks
Dear Baffled,
Thanks for your letter, and immediately your history hound can say with certainty that there were no blanks being manufactured at the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant (VAAP). In fact, the sole purpose of the facility, when it was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1941 and 1943, was to produce vital materials for ammunition. Now, the United States was embroiled in World War II at the time. It was in all the newspapers!
Of course, the military machine that defended our freedom needed ammo. That’s where VAAP came in. While the facility was still under construction, the production of TNT, that’s trinitrotoluene for you chemistry types out there, began in 1942. In the same year, the production of nitric and sulfuric acid was also undertaken. TNT, as most of us know, is an explosive compound. So, from the summer of 1942 through the end of the war in 1945 more than 800 million, that’s right 800 million, pounds of TNT were produced at the VAAP. Logical that the place got the nickname of the “TNT Plant,” huh?
The site of the VAAP itself is about 6,350 acres, much of which is covered by forests, and during its time as an explosives production facility the VAAP was dotted with bunkers for the storage of TNT, containers for the components of TNT and the acids, and all the various equipment and machinery needed to perform its functions.
Between America’s wars, the VAAP was dormant for several years at a time, but when the need arose, it came back on line. From 1946 to 1952, the facility was placed on “standby status.” Then, it was reactivated at the height of the Korean War and cranked out more than 283 million pounds of TNT from 1953 to 1957. After a long hiatus, the VAAP was brought up to speed once again in 1965, producing TNT during the Vietnam War until 1969. Upgrades of the production equipment took place periodically, and by the time the last TNT production ended in 1977, another 1.8 billion pounds had been manufactured since 1965.
Of course, there was a cost associated with the production of TNT and those volatile acids. Folks were not as environmentally savvy in those days as we are now, and, needless to say, some serious contamination occurred during the 35 years of on again-off again production. During the early 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the State of Tennessee, and other entities began a cooperative effort to clean up the VAAP site. Now, not to dig up the past, but Old Hamilton would be remiss if he did not mention to you, dear reader, that lots and lots of drums containing waste were buried on the site. Ponds were contaminated with the residue of the manufacturing process. Old storage bunkers needed remediation. Yes, a lot of environmental heavy lifting has taken place at the old VAAP site, but we can all agree that the millions of dollars spent have been out of necessity and simply doing the right thing.
In 1997, the U.S. Army made the decision that the VAAP real estate (which has also been referred to in the past as the Volunteer Site) was no longer needed. Congress subsequently passed a bill which allowed the transfer of more than 1,000 acres to the city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County. Then, in September 2000, a 940-acred tract was sold to the city and county for $7.5 million. So began the reinvention of the old VAAP locale into Enterprise South Industrial Park.
Well, we are nearing a decade since that transfer in 2000, and several entities have already located at Enterprise South. Of course, Volkswagen is the most prominent to announce its intentions, but there will be more to come.
Dear Hamilton Bush,
Walking downtown near the Sports Bar some time ago, I noticed through the pavement what looked like railroad tracks. Since then, it has come to my attention that Chattanooga once had a bustling streetcar service, moving people around the city. What can you tell me about the days of the streetcar locally?
Regards,
Lay It on the Line
Dear Lay,
Your question is quite provocative, leading Old Hamilton to opine for just a moment on the value of public transportation. Here’s to CARTA for its tireless efforts to transport Chattanooga to and from work and home, for its commitment to cleaner and more efficient transport with the electric buses, and for the positive impact on your scribe’s wallet. Given the price of a gallon of gas these days, yours truly has even been compelled to greater frugality in the operation of his 1965 Beetle. Apologies for the digression…
In response to your query, those tracks do indeed belong to a bygone era in the Scenic City. This goes back to an enterprising group of local citizens petitioning the state legislature for the establishment of a streetcar line in 1867. Five years later, the Chattanooga and Lookout Street Railroad Company came into being, but its first horse-drawn car did not roll down Market Street for another three years.
Now, the first manager of the Chattanooga and Lookout Street Railroad Company was a fellow named A.J. “Fatty” Harris. Given his nickname, it would probably come as no surprise that Mr. Harris was unable to take a seat, drive, or even board a car due to his rotundity. He also is reported to have had a penchant for alcoholic beverages and would toast the passing of his streetcar from a perch in a large chair at J.W. Kelly’s saloon. The toast itself was not the issue. It was the frequency thereof. Harris literally drank all the profits.
In 1881, Mr. J.H. Warner acquired the troubled line and got it back on track. As he extended its reach to the foot of Lookout Mountain, a competitor emerged in the form of the city’s first electric streetcar line, the Chattanooga Electric Street Railway. By 1889, the two streetcar companies had merged. During the same time, a steam railroad line was built in 1885, and by 1900 the Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain Railway and the Chattanooga Railway Company were running up and down Lookout Mountain. These faced financial difficulty due to dependence on the tourism trade, and by 1909 the Chattanooga Railway and Light Company had absorbed them. Adding to the transport competition was the introduction of two incline railways on Lookout Mountain. Their story is for another time, however.
Old Hamilton doesn’t believe any of the streetcars had catchy names like “Desire,” but they did serve as a principal form of transportation in Chattanooga for decades. In 1911, Charles E. James founded the Chattanooga Traction Company and constructed a 13-mile line up Signal Mountain. James later became the first mayor of Signal Mountain, and his line operated until 1934, nine years after his death. In 1920, however, the Chattanooga Railway and Light Company was acquired by TEPCO, the Tennessee Electric Power Company, which promptly decreed that no new streetcar lines would be constructed. By then, the automobile was making its way onto Chattanooga’s streets in relatively large numbers, and buses were competing with the streetcars by the 1930s. Two successor companies continued to operate streetcar lines in the city until the mid-1940s, closing down unprofitable routes.
The last Chattanooga streetcar known to have operated was engaged in hauling supplies to Hales Bar Dam in Marion County along the three-mile line from Ladds to Guild. The car included a freight motor and section of the frame from car No. 292.