I live about a block and a half away from Crabtree Farms in a residential neighborhood called Clifton Hills. I often walk my dogs to the gates of Crabtree Farms and back, so we all get a little exercise.
When I walk out the door, I walk up the slightly sloped road called Clifton Terrace Alley to Clifton Terrace where I walk one time around the Clifton Terrace loop and then take Clifton Terrace down to East 30 Street and toward Crabtree Farms. My route back is to walk along East 30th Street back to Crescent Circle and then home.
Whenever Crabtree Farms hosts an event, like their spring plant sale coming up soon, I walk over to check things out. A few years ago, I wrote an article about their plant sale, and I learned a lot about the history of the land associated with today’s Crabtree Farms.
According to their website and my previous interview with staff, the land that Crabtree Farms is on has been in agricultural use for over 200 years. It was originally stewarded by Native Americans, that is until the Trail of Tears when they were forcefully removed.
I also learned there was once a plantation called Oakland Plantation in the area, built in the early 1800’s. I had assumed (I know, I know) that the plantation home was where Crabtree Farms is today. But I started doing some research and found an article written by Chuck Hamilton in November 2012 for The Chattanoogan.
Hamilton is a local historian and writer for local periodicals and a few other periodicals with a more global audience, according to his bio.
In Hamilton’s article he stated Oakland Plantation, “Was owned by Daniel F. Cocke, who built his home which he called by the same name atop Clifton Hill, the knob the crest of which is circled by Clifton Terrace.”
Based on this information the loop where I walk my dogs is where the plantation home once stood, literally just a few hundred feet from my house.
He went on to say the plantation was the largest plantation in ante-bellum Hamilton County covering a large swatch of Chattanooga Valley north of the state line. He wrote that it possibly covered thousands of acres.
To get an idea of how much land this plantation covers, the closest other plantation was the George Gillespie plantation, at the site of the former Daniel Ross home which is where the Calvin Donaldson School is today roughly 2.5 miles away. From my house to the Georgia State line is also 2 miles. I don’t know how far east and north it stretched, but that is a lot of land.
According to Crabtree Farms’ website, and Hamilton’s article, Cocke had 44 slaves living on the plantation at the outbreak of the Civil War. And it was the impending Civil War which forced Cocke to flee and sell the property to Arthur P. Watkins for $20,000. After the war, Cocke resided in Franklin, Tennessee. He is buried there in Rest Haven Cemetery.
After Watkins’ death the house was inherited by his family. Near the time of WWI, a large portion of the original plantation was sold for development, and the resulting neighborhood was annexed to the city in 1925.
Several decades later, John Crabtree purchased a portion of land along the Chattanooga Creek that had yet to be developed and began to farm the property.
Five decades later, the property was donated it to the city of Chattanooga with the stipulation that it remain in agricultural use. Crabtree Farms was born in November of 1998.
Clifton Terrace loop is now an open park area with trees, a bench, and a beautiful open space.
I know my house was originally built in 1920 and was likely part of the area that got annexed to the city in 1925. I can only imagine what lies in the ground beneath my neighborhood. Afterall, Cocke fled the area as the Civil War approached and my house is only 7.9 miles from the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park and Battlefields. It is also well-known that soldiers marched in this area.
There are two pillars at 32nd Street and Rossville Blvd., that have historical markers on them. They call this section of Rossville Blvd., the Road of Remembrance.
The pillar on the east side reads:
To the American Soldiers who in three wars have marched along this road. The American Legion Auxiliary, Davis King Summers Post No. 14 dedicates this road in loving memory. August 1930.
The lower plaque reads:
World War II 1941-45 Summers Whitehead Unit No. 14 October 1948.
The West pillar reads:
Four American Armies have marched over this road: two opposing armies in the Civil War 1861-1865 One in the Spanish American War 1898 and the last in the World War 1917-18.
I think it’s time to break out my metal detector and dig up my backyard. Or better yet, you might start seeing me and my ghost hunting equipment, seated on the park bench at night. Right where the house once stood. And if I get up suddenly and start running, you better start running too.