Missionary Ridge Homes & 1863 Battlefield of Chattanooga · · PAGE 16. 

November 18, 2020:  Wednesday got started as we left the hotel in East Ridge, Tennessee at 8:30 AM and headed West toward Missionary Ridge, the site of a big Civil War battle that would precede the 1864 Atlanta Military Campaign for the US Army against the Confederate Army.  These homes are not from the 1860's. They occupy space at the peak of Missionary Ridge to have a good view looking both East and West.  The trees have grown quite a bit since the homes were built with some of the scenic views being lost.  

Here is the house next door continuing north on South Crest Road.  Both of these houses sit at the top of the ridge with a good view of Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain to the west.  They also have a view of mountains toward the East.

The street directly in front of the house in the photo above is Crest Road looking ahead to the north, which we are using to get to these locations.  The Old Ringgold Road is the street descending from the ridge down to the west side toward Chattanooga.  That road was in constant use before a pair of tunnels were built through the ridge, completed in 1913.  You will see those shortly as that was the route we took into the city today.  For now, we have some additional sights to see up here on Missionary Ridge going North.

There are plenty of these plaques on the battlefields around Chattanooga, Tennessee and Chickamauga, Georgia.  They are about the military units that fought in these locations.

This location is where a major attack took place at Missionary Ridge in 1863.  This high point of the ridge overlooked a natural pass just north of here.  Confederate General Braxton Bragg had his headquarters here before Union soldiers pushed the rebels off the ridge and all the way down to Ringgold Gap in Georgia.

The DEAD END sign was installed here where Crest Road was rerouted in the 1960's with the construction of Interstate 24 through that ridge-cut pass into Chattanooga.  A new bridge was built with the interstate construction to re-connect South Crest Road continuing to North Crest Road along Missionary Ridge on the north side of the ridge-cut.

These plaques speak for themselves as a tally of casualties.  The BLUE plaques are for Union men involved in the battles in this area.

The RED and White plaques record the losses for the Confederate Army.

The letters C S A stand for the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy.  I grew up in this area and have seen these markers and statues all my life.

I took this photo of Linda in the front seat of her car and her dog Chase posing for me as we were getting out to see the monuments and historic markers here on Missionary Ridge..

I made this enlargement of his face.  He is due for a grooming after we get back home to Florida.

This very tall monument was erected by the State of Illinois to honor their fallen soldiers here at the battle of Missionary Ridge.

Here is Linda's photo of that monument with me coming toward the car covered up by my sweater and hood on top of my Van's Aircraft hat.  It was cold this morning.  You can see a BLUE leash on my left hand in this photo as I walked Chase around in the grass while Linda took additional photos with her camera.

Today's battlefield sites are the first time Linda has seen anything like this up close.  She had visited some battlefields in Virginia in the past, but never got up close to cannons the way they are displayed here at Missionary Ridge and other locations near Chattanooga.

Many of the monuments in this area were erected in the years from 1895 to 1900.  The soldier on the left is holding binoculars.  The man on the right is drawing his sword for close combat as there was plenty of that happening in the battle here in 1863.

These bronze soldiers will be on guard duty forever.  Their long rifles have always been the tool of sharp shooters.  We call them snipers today.  A number of civil war battles were decided when a commanding general on the battlefield was killed by a sharp shooter using a musket similar to this one.

This marble monument seen below honors the brave soldiers of the 97th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  Here are the words at the bottom of this carved marker:

"This regiment of Warner's Brigade, Wood's division was the first infantry regiment to cross Tennessee River at and occupy Chattanooga September 9th, 1863.  November 25th 1863 in Sheridan's division charged Missionary Ridge, gaining the crest as shown by bronze tablet north end of viaduct and pursuing the enemy to Chickamauga Creek.  Loss 149 killed and wounded out of 434."

Here is the East Ridge approach to the 1913 tunnel I mentioned earlier.  The road on the right side of the concrete divider is how we got to the top of Missionary Ridge on Crest Road going north to take the photos seen on the page above.  The 12 feet six inches of vertical clearance inside the tunnel prevents modern trucks from using this route since those trailers are 13 feet six inches tall.  Interstate 24 was opened across the "RIDGE CUT" in 1965 making the Missionary Ridge tunnels local routes only.

This is a view of the Bachman twin tunnels on the East side of the ridge.  The tunnels are 1,034.8 feet in length. The climbing vines seen covering the trees and bushes in this image are KUDZU vines found in many southern states.  The vine is a native plant from East Asia and Southeast Asia that was used to control erosion on roadways and hillsides in the first part of the 20th century.  They are still here and thriving a century after first being introduced.

The light at the west end of the tunnel has a traffic circle to keep traffic moving.  Some kudzu vines hang down from the area above the tunnel exit.

Just a short distance from the west end of the tunnel going down the hill, a large amount of kudzu vines line the sides of the highway keeping the hillside soil in place.  When I lived in this area between 2001 and 2012, one of the local TV stations did a "feel food" story about a man with goats that liked to eat kudzu.  He would rent them out to the Tennessee Department of Transportation to EAT KUDZU. They would control the unwanted spread of the vines in certain locations.  The actual site where the goats were consuming the kudzu was about 1.5 miles north of this location near the next tunnels completed in 1929 going through Missionary Ridge.