Early Improvements to Tennessee River Navigation

Early Improvements to Tennessee River Navigation. . , The opening of the Muscle Shoals Canal in 1890 breathed new life into Tennessee riverboating operations which had begun to decline. Finally, boats could make their way to St. Louis and the Mississippi River, offering shipping rates that could challenge the railroads. When lower rates were not immediately offered by the Tennessee River Transportation Company, a group of local investors organized a company known locally as the Chattanooga Steamboat Company. When this company also failed to drive rates down, the Chattanooga Packet Company was formed by local businessmen. As the century neared its close, possibilities for riverboating were promising, but the wharfage problem resurfaced in 1897. The Tennessee River Navigation Company (a reorganized version of the Tennessee River Transportation Company) and the Chattanooga Packet Company controlled the wharf space at the landing, and merchants complained that boats not affiliated with these two companies were often unable to land and unload. , , This was to remain the case for nearly another decade, when the Chattanooga Packet Company acquired the option to buy the Tennessee River Navigation Company, including its boats, wharf property, and improvements. The Chattanooga Packet Company then offered the city the option to buy the wharf property for $50,000. The company would keep the new boats, but would lease the wharf from the city for $2,000 per year. This deal was accomplished in 1906, and the city finally owned the wharf property from Market Street to Chestnut Street. Landowners on the east side of Market also offered to sell their wharf property, which might then have extended the public wharf to the original site of Ross's Landing, but the city declined. , , Property rights were not the only things changing on the Tennessee River. The river itself was being more regularly maintained, and after the completion of the Hale's Bar Lock and Dam, changed completely. On the side of Cameron Hill, the Federal Government had established a shipyard where they built ships that could dredge and maintain a navigable channel on the Tennessee. In 1905, workers began to build a type of structure that would forever alter the character of the entire Tennessee River. , , In 1913, after eight years of construction south of Chattanooga, Hales' Bar Lock and Dam was finished. The waters of the river from the dam to an area north of Chattanooga became a lake, and water levels at Ross's Landing were six feet higher than before. This dam ended the era of the Suck, the Boiling Pot, and the Skillet, dangerous shoals south of town which had required skilled riverboat pilots. Though many pilots regretted the taming of the Tennessee, this dam also began the era of harnessing the power of a wild river for the generation of electricity. , , The large photograph at left shows the Chattanooga and the N.B. Forrest at wharf in 1906. The inset photographs show several boats that docked at the landing at various times in the city's history. From left to right, these boats are the Cherokee, the John A. Patten, the Avalon, the Megiddo (which sunk, and was rebuilt as the Chattanooga), the Chattanooga, and the L.C. Warner.