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The Chickamauga Dam and its environs

Chapter 9: SAVING THE NAME CHICKAMAUGA
By Robert Sparks Walker
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About This Book

This work guides readers from the crest of a large concrete dam into a close account of the reservoir, shoreline, flora, and wildlife, inviting walks along peninsulas and bays. It supplies precise descriptions and measurements of the navigation lock, spillway with multiple gates, long earth embankments, and a powerhouse with three turbines and capacity for another unit. Construction history and project statistics are reported, including quantities of earth moved, concrete poured, and overall cost. The dam is placed within the wider Tennessee River and TVA network of reservoirs and tributaries, with route distances and system diagrams. Nearby plateaus, local landmarks, and Civil War events are sketched to enrich the surrounding landscape.


Mayor Hugh P. Wasson of Chattanooga, standing by the side of President Dutra of Brazil, points to an interesting feature of the Chickamauga Dam


The story of these two children was so remarkable that Elias Cornelius wrote a book entitled The Little Osage Captive, which was published in Boston, also in York, England. The book had a wide sale.

Later when John Rogers, Cherokee, came from Arkansas to take Lydia Carter and John Osage Ross back to the Osages, there was great sadness at Brainerd when the missionaries had to part with the children. John Rogers was an antecedent of the late humorist Will Rogers and a relative of Tiana Rogers, Sam Houston’s Cherokee wife.

The Brainerd Mission was closed on August 19, 1838, at the time of the removal of the Cherokees to the West. Many of the missionaries chose to accompany them to the new lands and there resumed their labors as they had done so unselfishly at Brainerd. It should be remembered that Brainerd Mission gave the name to Missionary Ridge, and on August 19, 1938, at the identical hour marking the 100th anniversary of the closing of the Brainerd Mission, a meeting was held on the grounds attended by hundreds of Chattanoogans.

SAVING THE NAME CHICKAMAUGA

A few months before the Chickamauga Dam was completed in 1940, its historical name, with so much beauty and clear, sweet music in its pronunciation, was threatened with extinction.

Persons who were interested in preserving the original Cherokee names became anxious over the safety of the name Chickamauga Dam. Through the columns of The Chattanooga News a protest was registered daily for about a week. The beginning interview came from the historian of the University of Chattanooga, who was strongly opposed to changing the name to the McReynolds’ Dam, in honor of Chattanooga’s Congressman. On succeeding days, similar protests were published from Chattanooga’s leading citizens, each of them giving logical reasons for the retention of the name Chickamauga. At the close of the series of interviews the public had been thoroughly awakened to the importance of holding on to this beautiful historical name which had been given to some of this region’s loveliest streams by its aborigines. Irvin Cobb once declared that the word Chattanooga was the most beautiful of any word he knew in the English language. Could not the well known humorist writer also have made the same assertion about the word Chickamauga?

To climax the movement to hold on to the historical name, the Chickamauga Chapter of the DAR of Chattanooga, at the last moment when the bill was up for its final reading, the members voted unanimously for the retention of the name Chickamauga. When Congressman S. D. McReynolds received notice of its action, he withdrew his name, and the name Chickamauga Dam was thereby saved for posterity.


Old Grist Mill at Brainerd Mission as seen from Chickamauga Town.


CHICKAMAUGA LAKE

Where farmers’ cattle grazed on pasture lands,
The fishes feed; the clumsy turtles swim
Where once the corn crops grew; the frog expands
His throat, proud of the pleasure given him;
This lake now slips its fingertips between
A hundred little pebbled hills, and all
Are dressed in tender grass and leaves of green,
With here and there an islet like a ball
Half sunken in a pool, yet floating on
To reach some distant shore. The swallows swing
Their airplanes down and wet their beaks at dawn,
And men awake to hear the thrushes sing.
When day grows old and sun is westward bound,
They stretch the shadowed trees across the lake,
And duck and loon and gull and teal have found
A place which fishermen will not forsake;
And when the moon receives its silvered crown,
The waters, like magicians, reach into
The sky and pull the stars and planets down
Without their heat, void of the distant blue;
Then leave them floating in their watered graves,
And as the boat speeds on, the pilot sees
Amidst the rippled and discordant waves,
Reflections broken by realities.
This latent power decrees that through the years
The form of woman shall remain unbowed
By household toil which warped the pioneers
Who slaved as sweaty beasts while farmers plowed
And tilled the soil; that men shall play as well
As work, and know what rest from labor means;
That love of beauty in the heart shall tell
That eyes are never blind to Nature’s scenes.
If Chickamauga means in Cherokee
A sluggish stream, this dam revives the dead,
Electrifies the soul of Tennessee,
And gives to industry a potent head.