Chattanooga travel notes
I’ve been hearing whispers in the parents-of-young-children circles about Chattanooga since we moved back to the Atlanta area 3 years ago.
We would discuss family friendly travel destinations and Chattanooga would come up, but I never really got it. What’s in Chattanooga?
They’d say things like “they’ve got the Chattanooga Choo Choo” or “there’s a great aquarium”. My children like a train and some fish as much as anyone’s, but I struggled to see what would make this worth the 2 hour drive.
This spring break, we finally went for it, and now I get it. It’s a beautiful, accessible city with a ton of options for things to do with children under 5. Not many of those things are unique to Chattanooga per se, but I’m not sure how much that matters at this stage.
The city itself
I have to say, I was surprised and more than a little bit charmed. The city itself is like a combination of Pittsburgh and Raleigh. The downtown urban core clearly came of age in the ~1880s to ~1920s and was formerly industrial. There’s a ridge above the city and a river that runs through it. It’s small. You could walk across it in an hour or two, even with a stroller.
The city is clearly prioritizing tourism. There’s a free electric bus that connects the city and makes it easy to get around (and for children the age mine are, it is an activity in an of itself). It’s clean and well marked. The aquarium and children’s museum are new and have a lot of local support. There’s a hint of Disney World about it, but it’s fun (to be fair, the North Shore neighborhood seemed a lot more vibrant, like people actually live there).
Things to do
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The Chattanooga Choo Choo, a classic steam engine in the old train station that kids can climb up on and play in. Things I learned: Chattanooga’s claim to fame is that it connected the Northern and Southern railway systems in the 1880s.
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There’s a great aquarium, at least as good as Atlanta or Monterrey Bay.
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Great parks — Coolidge Park was my favorite. It’s got fountains and a carousel. It used to be that you could walk from the Riverfront (where the aquarium is) to the North Shore (where Coolidge Park is) but that’s currently closed for renovations.
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Rock City is just outside of town. This is probably the most unique Chattanooga thing that we saw. It’s tough to describe, but worth it. Plenty to see and do — and an incredible view of the valley.
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Children’s museum. Is it just me, or have these gotten way better since I was a kid? Basically everywhere I travel with my kids has one (Pittsburgh, Hendersonville, apparently Chattanooga). Do they actually exist year round or are they pop ups that get set up when I book a trip?
Musings
Walking through the beautiful old train station made me a little bit sad. It’s a gorgeous building that clearly isn’t being maintained. It’s an elegant building with a sense of place, but the big central corridor is just empty. It reminded me of Buenos Aires: all those beautiful buildings slowly falling into disrepair.
This sadness seeped into the rest of the trip. Chattanooga is clearly doing great. There’s a lot of investment in downtown. It’s safe and clean. Many of the restaurants and stores are obviously new. My family will definitely go back.
And yet, I couldn’t help but noticing a lot of empty storefronts. Not enough to detract from the experience and all well maintained. But one in four, in some places as many one in two are empty.
Observing this in the background of Liberation Day and all the discourse that followed had me wondering: how prosperous can a city be if it is only a tourist destination, rather than a place that people live and create?
2025-04-22