Following the widespread destruction of the 1867 flood, Chattanooga Mayor Dudley Carr pledged that the city would raise the level of streets near the Tennessee River so that "downtown" would never flood again.
Chattanoogans learned in spring 1917 that major floods were not a thing of the past and that the high-water havoc of 1867, 1875 and 1886 would soon repeat itself.
After a lengthy debate and two public votes about the location of a new school in Hill City, now North Chattanooga, the Sylvan Park location was chosen, with a vote of 80 to 57.
By February 1929, Chattanooga leaders were considering a site for a modern municipal airport, having received a report from the aeronautics branch of the United States Department of Commerce.
In August 1929, Chattanooga News writer John T. Whitaker profiled "the father of aviation in Chattanooga," John E. Lovell, the man for whom the new airport then being planned would be named.
Chattanooga emerged from the nation's great conflict earlier than many cities and became known, during the final quarter of the 19th century, as the "Dynamo of the South."