Soldier Tourists

Soldier Tourists. The View from the Top. Both the Confederate and the Union soldiers who fought in and around Chattanooga were struck by the region's scenic beauty. During the Union army's occupation of Chattanooga (November 1863 - Summer 1865), countless men hiked up Lookout Mountain to gaze out over the surrounding countryside, have their pictures taken for the folks back home, and walk through the mountain's rock formations. They no doubt shared the opinion of Elias Cornelius, a Congregationalist minister who wrote of the view in 1818, "The summit of Lookout Mountain overlooks the whole country ... with the view of an interminable forest, penetrated by the windings of a bold river, interspersed with hundreds of verdant prairies and broken by many ridges and mountains ... [providing] a landscape which yields to few others in extent, variety, or beauty.", Many of the soldiers posed atop the "palisades" at the northern end of Lookout Mountain's summit. In 1868, William F.G. Shanks, a Northern journalist, described the palisades as "a ridge of dark, cold, gray rocks, bare even of moss, which rise to the height of fifty or sixty feet, overhanging, arch-like, the beholder who looks up at them from their base; and which, seen from the valley, have the appearance of a crown encircling a human brow." Umbrella Rock on the palisades was an especially popular spot for photographs. Even generals, such as Ulysses S. Grant, posed on top of the mountain.