The Chattanooga Choo Choo

The Terminal Station opened in nineteen oh nine as the crown of Chattanooga's railroad empire. By then, the city was one of the major rail hubs in the South, the point where multiple lines from the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Deep South converged. The station's dome rose eighty-two feet. Its arcade was fashioned after a Roman basilica. Travelers passing through on the Southern Railway saw something designed to communicate permanence and importance.

Rail shaped this city from its beginning. When the first line reached Chattanooga in eighteen fifty, the population almost immediately began to boom. By the time of the Civil War, half the Confederacy's major arsenals depended on rail lines that ran through this city. Chattanooga was, in military terms, a rail junction first and a city second.

By nineteen thirty, the city's association with trains had become cultural shorthand. Glenn Miller and his orchestra recorded Chattanooga Choo Choo in nineteen forty-one as part of the soundtrack to the film Sun Valley Serenade. The song described a train journey from New York's Pennsylvania Station to Chattanooga. RCA Victor presented the recording with the first gold record award in music industry history, recognizing sales of one million two hundred thousand copies.

The Terminal Station itself closed to rail traffic in nineteen seventy and was converted to a hotel. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel opened in nineteen seventy-three. The dome and the great hall survive. A few old Pullman rail cars sit on tracks in the courtyard, available as rooms. The train stopped running but the myth of it kept going.