Transportation to Summertown no quick jaunt
(Editor’s note: Last of three parts)
Elizabeth Bryan Patten, long-time leader in historic preservation and beautification, wrote in her 1959 “History of Summertown on Walden’s Ridge” of the flight from the cholera and yellow fever outbreaks in Chattanooga to the higher elevation.
“It was in mid-September of that year (1878) when a prominent individual died of the yellow fever. Chattanoogans fled the city as before an invading army. Some went upstream on a steamboat, others went to Blowing Springs to a Refuge Camp set up by the Board of Health; the Crutchfields went to a spring near Flintstone, Georgia. Several railroad men filled up an old passenger coach with beds. Each evening the car was attached to a train and taken out of town, to be brought back similarly the next morning.
“(1880) was the first summer that the D.M. Key family occupied their cabin in Summertown. The large family overflowed the three-room cabin. The only baths were taken in the stream in the gulch and the young ladies clad in chemises would sit on the rocks and bathe in the pools.
“Each morning Judge Key took his demijohn [a large bottle with a short neck] down the rocky path to the spring to get the water. The chalybeate [orange tinted iron salt] waters were a problem for cooking, and coffee made with it was a very special problem.
“It was on the Levi acres that many of the ‘suburban’ Summertown homes stand. The Poindexter, Willingham, Williams and Lupton homes are built on parcels of this land. Being detained in Chattanooga by a railroad wreck, in 1881, Captain J.C. Hutchison looked up at the mountain, hired a buggy, bought a cabin at the head of the W Corduroy [Road] and lived there 43 summers.
“Transportation was supplied by ‘hack’ [horse taxi] from the ‘cholera year’ on until private automobiles took over the trade. Uncle Jimmie Smith, Squire Connor, and Mr. Hartman were among those who drove hacks. Mr. Hartman announced his approach with blasts on his tallyho horn. The hack left the mountain at 6 a.m. and reached town at around 8:30. The steeper return trip required four hours and the hack left town around 2 p.m. Tickets were 50 cents. One hack driver had hauled tan bark and quipped that ‘he stopped barkin’ and started hackin’.’ It was no easy journey. The roads were rough, there was the ferry at the river before the ascent up the steep natural grades of the mountain road, dusty in dry weather, slick in wet weather, to the corduroy which was almost straight up, and onto the toll gate at the top. The corduroy was made of poles laid parallel in the dirt to hold it against gully washers and to widen the road as needed.
“Finally the cottagers contributed and bought the toll road and gave it to the county. Soon a new road was under construction, and the W was graded into it. On reaching the W the able-bodied passengers would walk the shortcut ‘to spell’ the horses and only the feeble and hard-hearted could resist the beseeching look in the eyes of the teams as they look back upon their load. Seats could be reserved but that didn’t mean the driver would pass up a passenger to hold it for you. They all had this same policy. Colonel Ochs [managing editor of the Chattanooga Times] and Shafter [his horse] made the trip in never more than two hours.
“As for food, Mr. Freudenberg came by twice a week with fresh meat he had just killed and and twice a week Mr. Kell came with fresh garden vegetables and of course there was the store at the top of the W. There was no ice up there, so no refrigerators. We had well houses or cellars.
“In the early days the mountain people worked for barter. Supplies and scales were kept at hand and the wages were paid in sugar, flour, coffee. Simple every day smoothing or flat irons were unknown to the mountain women and when asked how she smoothed clothes, Mrs. Miles replied, ‘we fold ’em and sot on ’em.’
“(Summertown) grew and flourished and was loved because the spirit of God was amongst its people between man and God, and between man and man. Another summer found the Union Chapel (Little Brown Church) built and with $3.00 in its treasury, the gift of Mr. Hartman. It was dedicated on Aug. 11, 1908.”