Preservation efforts were greatly rewarded when the Civil War Trust recently purchased an 11 acre tract at the heart of the Brown’s Ferry site near Chattanooga.
The story of success actually began more than a year ago when TCWPA Vice President Anthony Hodges secured permission to enter the privately owned property, then listed as “for sale”. A Three Star Tour was arranged, the first of its kind on this site, and as a result one of the tour participants, Carrington Montague of Chattanooga, made a generous offer to TCWPA to help purchase the property. The Civil War Trust closed on the property in August with funding from the American Battlefield Protection Program, the State of Tennessee, the Lyndhurst Foundation, TCWPA funding from several donors and the Civil War Trust.
On November 16th TCWPA and Friends of the Park hosted a private tour of the site with a diverse group of state legislators, federal, state, and local agency representatives, and leaders from local preservation and conservation organizations. National Park Service Historian Jim Ogden led the tour, sharing contemporary accounts of the October, 1863 nighttime amphibious landing that opened the “Cracker Line” and led to the ultimate Union victory at Chattanooga. The Brown’s Ferry crossing was also part of the “Trail of tears” and a migration route for settlers going to NW Georgia and Alabama.