The Dirtiest City in America, and What Came After

The same geography that made Chattanooga beautiful made it toxic. The ridges of Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and the surrounding valley walls that gave the city its dramatic setting also formed a natural bowl. Industrial smoke had nowhere to go. It settled.

For decades after the Civil War, Chattanooga was one of the heaviest industrial cities in the Southeast. Foundries, chemical plants, textile mills, and manufacturing operations ran alongside the Tennessee River and along the rail lines. By the mid-twentieth century, the residue had accumulated to the point where it was measurable in ways that could not be ignored.

In nineteen sixty-nine, the federal government formally declared Chattanooga to have the dirtiest air in the United States. The air was bad enough to cause documented health problems for residents. The declaration was both an embarrassment and, eventually, a catalyst. The city began what became a decades-long effort to clean up, shut down the most polluting operations, and reinvent its industrial identity.

By the nineteen eighties and nineties, the cleanup was producing visible results. The Tennessee Aquarium opened on the riverfront in nineteen ninety-two and became a landmark of the transformation, drawing visitors to a downtown that had been largely abandoned. The aquarium, housed in a distinctive building on the south bank, became one of the country's top public aquariums, welcoming its twenty-millionth visitor in March of two thousand thirteen.

Chattanooga rebranded itself the Scenic City. The nickname is not ironic. The air is clear enough now to see the mountains from downtown. The mountains were always there. The city had to decide it wanted to see them.