Winding around Walker County: Facts to know, places to go, and sites to see
Walker County is a beautiful place — that much most residents would probably agree on. If nature and history are things you love, you could stay busy for a while.
Let’s start with some basics about the county and move on from there.
There are five incorporated cities in Walker County. One of them may surprise you a little.
Lafayette is the city seat, with 6,888 residents last time someone counted.
Rossville comes in at 3,980 residents and is home to the John Ross House.
Chickamauga boasts 2,917 residents and its own school system.
Lookout Mountain’s 1,641 residents look down in the valley onto all the others.
And then there’s Fort Oglethorpe with a population of 10,423 folks, but only 358 of them live in Walker County. The rest live in Catoosa County.
To make matters more confusing, many residents who live in Fort Oglethorpe
have Rossville addresses, though they do not live in Rossville or Walker County.
If you aren’t confused enough, there are people who live in Catoosa County but have Chickamauga addresses.
Moving beyond the little confusions, the U.S. Census Bureau feels pretty certain that Walker County is home to around 69,398 people.
And speaking of moving, did you know that the Tennessee Valley Railroad offers
a “Chickamauga Turn” route with layovers in the city of Chickamauga (one hour, fifteen minutes) and Chickamauga Battlefield (30 minutes at Wilder Tower)?
If you prefer to move vertically and have a very long
rope and some serious experience, you can rappel into Fantastic Pit — 586 feet down, down, down. Incredible Pit is an experience, too, at 444 feet down.
Both pits are part of the Ellison Cave system that’s 12 miles long and 1,063 feet deep at its deepest.
Pettyjohn’s Cave offers a great opportunity for those who like to travel by crawling. It contains the Worm Tube — a 150-foot wiggle on hands and knees.
The bottom line is there are lots of ways to move around in Walker County and its cities and all the parts not in cities.