Soddy-Daisy: Two Coal Towns, One City Name
Near Chattanooga, Tennessee
The city of Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, has one of the more unusual names in Hamilton County, and it comes from a merger that happened in nineteen sixty-nine. Soddy and Daisy were two separate coal-mining communities along US Highway Twenty-Seven, about nine miles apart. Both towns thrived during the coal boom of the late eighteen hundreds, drawing miners and their families to this ridge country north of Chattanooga.
Both declined as the local coal economy faded. By the nineteen sixties, post-war suburban growth around Chattanooga was pushing outward, and the two communities decided to consolidate into a single city government. In April of nineteen sixty-nine, Soddy-Daisy was incorporated, stitching together those nine miles of US Twenty-Seven into one municipality.
The coal mines are long gone. The name remains, a reminder of two towns that each had their own identity and chose, eventually, to share one.
