Tag: Whiteside TN

Wikipedia says: Whiteside (formerly Aetna, Etna and Running Water) is an unincorporated community in Marion County, Tennessee. It was originally settled as a Cherokee town in the late eighteenth century.

After Indian Removal, European-American settlers moved in and later named it after James Anderson Whiteside (1803–1861), attorney, Chattanooga railroad promoter and land investor. It lies at an elevation of 807 feet (246 m).

For the decade preceding his death in 1792, Cherokee war chief Dragging Canoe lived at Running Water, a Chickamauga town. He and his Cherokee followers were opposed to European-American settlement in their lands; they moved to more distant areas of the frontier to avoid the Americans.

The community of Whiteside developed later at this site, named for a major railway investor. Shortly before the Civil War, a railway was constructed in this area. The terrain required also the construction of a tunnel and bridge. Colonel James Whiteside was a major stockholder in the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad. It took over construction of what is known as Whiteside Tunnel in 1858 through Missionary Ridge near Chattanooga when the Chattanooga, Harrison, Georgetown & Charleston Railroad went bankrupt. The tunnel is 986 feet (301 m) long. This railroad was later acquired by the Southern Railway (now the Norfolk-Southern) for its Knoxville-to-Birmingham main route.

The Whiteside bridge was constructed on another part of the route. Confederate troops destroyed it during the Civil War, but Union forces rebuilt the Whiteside trestle in 1863, for what was then known as the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. This structure washed away in a flood in 1867.