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.