Yellow Fever and Urban Development
A yellow fever epidemic in Chattanooga caused an exodus in 1878. Almost 12,000 people fled the city, many going to Lookout Mountain. At the time, the mountain was accessible on the north side only by a four-hour trip up the old Whiteside Turnpike, which was built in the 1850s and cost a toll of two dollars. Complaints about the toll led to the 1879 construction of the St. Elmo Turnpike, which had an easier grade and a lower toll (the St. Elmo turnpike was paved and renamed the Adolphus S. Ochs Highway in the late 1920s).
Until the 1880s, the area at the foot of Lookout Mountain remained primarily a wooded area. The real boom in the growth of St. Elmo as a residential community coincided with the planning and development of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, which was dedicated in 1890. At the time, St. Elmo saw development resulting from both a general real estate and construction boom in the South and the 1893 expansion of an electric trolley from Chattanooga to St. Elmo.
Read more about this topic: St. Elmo Historic District (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
Famous quotes containing the words yellow, fever, urban and/or development:
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Y’know Pete, back where I come from folks call that love stuff “quick poison” or “slow poison.” If it’s quick poison it hurts you all over real bad like a shock of electricity. But if it’s slow poison, well, it’s like a fever that aches in your bones for a thousand years.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“I have misplaced the Van Allen belt
the sewers and the drainage,
the urban renewal and the suburban centers.
I have forgotten the names of the literary critics.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)