One of my memories as a child was my great-grandmother, the one I had for any appreciable amount of time, telling me how glad she was to move out of Knoxville to Fountain City. She had grown up in Mechanicsville, on Dora and Calloway Streets, as her father had been a minister at the old Deaderick Avenue Baptist Church.
Though she could have easily walked to Knoxville High School, she chose to ride the streetcar into Fountain City to attend Central, then a Knox County School. After getting married and a few children were born, Mamaw and Papaw Payne finally did move north up behind the duck pond near Gentry’s Funeral Home.
It wasn’t that she hated Mechanicsville. What she hated was the pollution and the noise, living a stone’s throw from the L&N and Southern Railway depots and the all the clanging and coal ash that went with them. She told me it was nice to finally be able to hang the wash out and not have it come back in with a gray film all over it.
Mamaw was born at the tail end of the Gilded Age, an era with varying date ranges depending on which historian you check in with. The narrow range is 1870 to 1900, the broader from 1865 to the beginning of World War I. Whichever it is, Knoxville in the 1890s was dirty, Gilded Age be damned.
Newspapers from the era reflect the coming suburbanization of the whole county, with the arrival of neighborhoods like Old North, Fourth & Gill and Parkridge popping up beyond the city limits. People of means didn’t want to be too far from the amenities of downtown Knoxville, but wanted to get have a little more space where the air was clearer. In 1893, J.C White and L.S. Stanton were advertising lots for development in what would become Lincoln Park.
Another planned development, that ultimately failed, was for lots on what is now the Cherokee Farm property of the University of Tennessee. L.D. Dillon and B. Wheeler were offering “very liberal terms and conditions” for the first 10 to apply for building lots on Cherokee. They had built a bridge across the Tennessee River (then called the Holston) and even had the assurances that there would eventually be a streetcar line once houses started going in. Known as the Cherokee Bridge, it was located roughly one mile west of the current Buck Karnes/Alcoa Highway Bridge.
By 1916, the property and the private bridge had been deeded to UT by Knox County. The state Highway Department finished the Buck Karnes Bridge in 1930. The Cherokee Bridge remained unused and fell into disrepair and became something of a hot potato. The university offered it to the city of Knoxville, who would only accept it if it was delivered intact and usable to the foot of Henley Street. That obviously didn’t happen, and the construction of the Henley Bridge commenced later in 1930. Bu the end of the 1930s, the Cherokee Bridge was dismantled.
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Sources: The Knoxville Journal digital archives, Tennessee Encyclopedia, University of Tennessee Library digital collection
Beth,
I enjoyed your post, The Old Cherokee Bridge To Nowhere. I have seen the remanence of the north end of the bridge near Kingston Pike, now gone I think, and the south end. I only learned about that bridge in the last 20 years and was glad to learn more about it through your post.
I was also interested in the mention of North Knoxville, Fourth & Gill neighborhoods. My grandfather, William E. Peters, lived on Grainger Street, now the second house down on the left from Broadway. His father, George W. Peters, started and ran Peters & Bradley Mill Company, just off Broadway on First Creek. Granddad’s property backed up to the mill property, so he would walk to work every day.
In doing genealogy work on my family, I have always been curious about when Grainger Street was built. My grandmother was Clara Regina Schneider. Clara and William were married in 1898. Clara had a brother who also lived on Grainger Street about a block further down on the right. Recently, I learned their father, Carl Schneider, had a farm where Grainger Street is today. I am hoping, as I continue my research, to learn more about how Grainger Street got its name and how big my great-grandfather’s farm was.
Thanks again for your post. I am going to go back and read more of your post to see what I can learn.