Preserving the Past and Learning its Legacy

Located in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is a place full of history—but also a place of unique community. Often referred to as “the Chickamauga Battlefield” or “Chick-Chatt,” the park is the preserved site of two major Civil War battles in the South. While tourists come for the history tour, locals come for the hiking, walking, running, and equestrian trails. Members of the community use the park to exercise, meet their friends, and fulfill their daily ritual of commuting to their beloved park.

If you visit frequently, as I did for a month, you will begin to recognize the same people. You will recognize the group of horseback riders who pass through the battlefield and down through the creek, and the clan of cyclists training for their next race. You’ll say hi to the woman who passes you on the trail every day at lunchtime, and recognize the older woman who rides her bike around the park, stopping everyone she sees to tell them about the Chickamauga Battlefield face mask she made. If you stop to talk with any of these people, they will surprise you with the fondness they feel towards the park. Some people might even tell you not only what the park has done for them, but what they have done for the park themselves. For generations, members of the community have dedicated hard work and long hours to Chick-Chatt in order to preserve the land and its legacy.  

This past summer, I did just that. I worked at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park on a crew for Southeast Conservation Corps (SECC). SECC is an organization based in Chattanooga, Tennessee that offers a range of opportunities for youth, young adults, and veterans to serve their local community and learn about conservation work.  The crew I was a member of was an all-women’s youth crew that consisted of four high schoolers and one adult crew leader. 

We spent 4 weeks together, completing projects at the Chickamauga Battlefield and becoming good friends while doing so. One of the projects I worked on with my crew was to restore a footbridge that connects the visitor’s center to the other areas of the park. When I first walked up to the bridge and noticed the weathered wooden planks and the beaten path of grass leading to and from the bridge, I could tell it was a well-worn and beloved part of the park. While we were dismantling the structure, we found little artifacts that told us a fraction of the story behind the footbridge. There was dirt from hiking boots packed between the floorboards and fragments of confetti from a child’s birthday party. You could feel the smudge beneath the bridge from when the creek water rose against the bottom from years of flooding. Like every other structure at the park, this bridge has a history—but it doesn’t have to do with war and battles. It begins with recreation and a bond between running partners.  

Bill Kinnaman is a structural engineer. In 1997, he and his running group designed and built the original bridge. Before speaking with Bill, I wasn’t fully aware of the significance of our work until he pointed out how both our contributions to the Chickamauga Battlefield tie us together. I had the rewarding experience of talking with Bill and listening to him tell the origin story of the bridge after he reached out to SECC to compliment my crew’s work. About a month later, Bill and I were swapping stories on the phone. He told me about his running group: the ‘Battlefield Runners’, a group of 15 to 20 men that started running together in 1980. Every weekend, starting at the visitor’s center parking lot, they would run 20 miles on Saturdays and return to run the 10 mile park loop on Sundays. Over the course of many miles, Bill described, they became close friends. “At the time, the only way for people to get into the park from the visitor center was going across the bridge on highway 27,” Bill reported. The existing route was dangerous for pedestrians, and Bill and the Battlefield Runners recognized this. To address the issue, they formulated the idea of building a new bridge across the creek that runs through the McDonald field, connecting the visitor’s center to the rest of the park. Being the engineer of the group, Bill “drew up a little sketch on the design of the bridge, stamped it, and submitted it to the National Park Service.” About a year later, the National Park Service approved Bill’s plans and instructed the group where to build the bridge. Each of the Battlefield Runners, which consisted of carpenters, power company workers, and steel manufacturers, contributed to the project. It is empowering to know that my crew of environmental science majors, musical theater performers, and soccer players learned and conquered those skills as well.   

An important objective of the maintenance workers of Chick-Chatt—and conservation work in general—is to preserve the land and structures that make the area special. While the bridge’s origins do not date back to the Civil War, it has been a part of the park for over two decades, and serves an important role. It allows the public to access the recreational area of the park, which contributes to the deep sense of community you feel when you visit. My crew was instructed to maintain the original design of the bridge, making those details even more special. One thing that most hikers don’t think about is the generations of people who have worked on the dirt they walk on, or the dozens of hands that set the stone steps they climb. On every trail and in every park, there is an invisible legacy of those who came before soaked into the dirt. In this story though, the legacy of the is not invisible or unknown: by connecting with Bill, I was able to catch a glimpse of the legacy of the land I served on. 

Since last summer, I have returned to the park and the bridge we built a few times. There are no longer rows of uncut lumber on the grass, piles of disrupted dirt, clumps of sawdust, or tools laid out around the worksite. Not much about the bridge has changed. It sits atop the same telephone poles that have always supported it, which were donated by a local power company. The only difference is fresh wood and screw in every board instead of the original nails. It’s hard to believe that just months before, it was dismantled and reconstructed by a group of young women. This is one of the many beauties of conservation work: the goal is not necessarily to modernize old things, it is to preserve them. Bill illustrated this idea perfectly when he told me “[the bridge’s] life has been lengthened by the fact that you came in there and gave it new life. And that’s wonderful.” Bill and his friends built a bridge to connect the community to the park. 23 years later, my women’s youth crew preserved it. Hopefully, in another 20 years, a new crew that represents the future of conservationists will make their mark on the park as well. That would be wonderful too.

— SECC’s Women’s Youth Crew was made possible by the National Park Foundation.