The Tennessee River passed through many barriers to navigation just downstream from Chattanooga: boulders, turns, shoals, whirlpools and other obstacles with names such as the Whirl, the Suck and the Boiling Pot. Meanwhile, navigation problems along the Tennessee River were foremost on everyone’s mind. The other was for the railroad to head northwest to Ross’s Landing: another place where the river turns west (but this time in southeast Tennessee). One was for the railroad to head west to Gunter’s Landing: the place in northeast Alabama where the Tennessee River abruptly turns west. Long and his colleagues then surveyed what route best connected Terminus to the Tennessee River. The town that grew up around “Zero Mile Post” was originally called Terminus. Sometime in the late 1830s, a member of Long’s team drove a stake in the ground seven miles east of the Chattahoochee River. The W&A hired Stephen Harriman Long, an explorer and cartographer who had helped build the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, to be its lead surveyor. The idea of the W&A was to connect the interior of the state - the intended destination of the many railroads already in the works - to the Tennessee River. Then, in 1836, the Georgia government took the rather unusual step of starting a taxpayer-owned railroad called the Western and Atlantic.
All three were intended to link the Atlantic coastline and Savannah River with points in the interior of the state. By the mid-1830s, the Peach State had several railroads in the works with names such as the Central of Georgia Railroad, the Monroe Railroad and the Georgia Railroad. The state of Georgia was about 10 years ahead of Tennessee when it came to railroads. Were it not for Long, the city of Chattanooga might not exist. Stephen Harriman Long is an interesting example. When it comes to history, politicians and generals get all the glory, while no one gives credit to the engineers. There was no Chattanooga when Matthew Rhea created his celebrated 1832 map of Tennessee, and there might not have been one were it not for Stephen Harriman Long.Matthew Rhea Map / TN State Library and Archives/mainstreet-nashville
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