Seventy-five years ago, Gordon Browning was Tennessee governor, Hugh Wasson was mayor of Chattanooga, the city's population hit 131,041, and the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham addressed more than 25,000 at Engel Stadium.
Chattanooga University, the predecessor to UTC, became Grant University through denominational competition and differences over governance within the Methodist Episcopal Church in the late 1880s.
The year was 1925, and the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium, Chattanooga's living monument to the fallen from the Great War, was completed and open. The staff planned a holiday program fitting to the city's most striking gathering site.
Much of Southeast Tennessee's landscape was impacted historically by the force of the Tennessee River as it swept southward from the Holston River, coursed through what became Knoxville and the Cherokee lands to the future Chattanooga area before flowing westward through the beautiful Sequatchie Valley.
In early 1905, a group of investors collaborated with the federal government on building a lock, dam and electric power plant on the Tennessee River near Hales Bar in Marion County.
If you are keeping abreast of local news, then you know that last year Chattanooga was named the first "National Park City'' in North America and only the third in the world.
The Chattanooga Daily Times, in early coverage of the presidential campaign in January 1956, reported that the Democratic Party was already witnessing an "open and active contest" between four candidates with the most "public familiarity."
Chattanooga's Estes Kefauver was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1939, after campaigning as a progressive supporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
Chattanooga leaders took a bold step forward when they employed famed landscape artist and civic engineer John Nolen to create a system of parks, green spaces and playgrounds for the city.
In preparation for a new era in Chattanooga parks, Dr. S.G. Cook, member of the Parks Commission, gathered interested citizens and the media on Nov. 19, 1910, for a special announcement.
