Know the Facts

Below are some commonly repeated misconceptions about Moccasin Bend

Fiction: Nothing ever happened with that long anticipated visitor entrance to Moccasin Bend National Archeological District.

Fact: Designs for a new visitor orientation plaza at the Hamm Road "Gateway" entrance to Moccasin Bend passed final approvals earlier this year. The project is expected to be contracted out within the coming months and possibly completed as early as Fall 2024. The 1:1 public-private partnership matched grants and donations from more than 140 area businesses, individuals, families, and foundations with federal funding from the Congressional Centennial Challenge grant. Learn more at forevermoccasinbend.org

Fiction: Other nonconforming uses are remaining on Moccasin Bend indefinitely, so why single out the hospital?

Fact: The City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County continue their efforts to remove the jointly operated police firing range from Moccasin Bend for decades, and to provide law enforcement agencies with a new facility that meets modern standards (sound familiar?). Building a new firing range on the same campus is not even an option as the City, County, and State of Tennessee all committed to removing nonconforming uses at the earliest opportunity. The golf course lease is ongoing until the other pieces fall into place, then that will revert to National Park land as well. The firing range and the golf course could both be gone in ten years or less; building another hospital commits the State to being there for another 60+ years or more.

There are other places for a firing range, and there are other places for a hospital. There is only one National Archeological District in the country and only one National Historic Landmark in Hamilton County - Moccasin Bend.

Fiction: The state says they've assessed 40+ other potential sites and the cost/benefit equation doesn't work for anything but Moccasin Bend. 

Fact: Other sites were determined to be viable and - they just decided to build on a smaller piece of the Moccasin Bend campus.

Fiction: If we have to leave Moccasin Bend, we won't pay for the cleanup of the old hospital buildings, leaving a $8-$10m cleanup cost behind.

Fact: The City, County, and National Park Partners will gladly figure out picking up that cleanup cost.

Fiction: An archaeological survey of the proposed building site is underway, so the public can be confident that no sensitive resources will be disrupted.

Fact: The entire Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute campus is within the National Historic Landmark and legislation is in place to allow that land to be admitted into the National Archeological District boundary. In 2024, a Phase 1 archaeological survey of approximately 13 acres of the proposed new construction site is being conducted. Funding for construction of new hospital facilities is time limited, and the State is squandering time and resources that could be spent on seeking another site. The lack of transparency in this entire process to date gives the public no confidence in the results of the Phase I archaeological survey being thorough, or transparent.

Fiction: The State owns the land, we can do what we want with it.

Fact: The citizens of Tennessee are the owners of this public land, and the 23 Tribes with ancestral ties to the land are stakeholders as well. No public input or Tribal consultation went into this proposal to rebuild on the Bend.

Fiction: Mental health patients need the natural environment for healing, and the staff need the natural environment to not be stressed out at work.

Fact: Modern facilities are designed to be calming environments and can be landscaped to reflect a natural setting regardless of where they are. The downsides to this isolated natural setting must be considered as well: Moccasin Bend is not on any public transportation routes and provides only one road in and out for emergency vehicles. The isolated location upholds outdated systemic biases of keeping mental health patients out of sight. Additionally, the existence of a National Park site on Moccasin Bend, along with many other uses with Moccasin Bend in the name, causes confusion when a simple Google search comes back with multiple numbers. The unnecessary delays from calling wrong numbers to find the hospital is stressful for patients and their families seeking urgent mental health care.

Fiction: Nothing has happened on Moccasin Bend in the 20 years since it became a National Park Service site.

Fact:

- Founding of the ongoing Moccasin Bend Lecture Series in 2006

- Creation of a new public trail at the the Brown's Ferry/Old Federal Road Trace site in 2013

- Completion of a Moccasin Bend Cultural Landscape Assessment by the National Park Service in 2014

- Completion of a General Management Plan Amendment for Moccasin Bend by the National Park Service in 2017, laying out the plan for developing and interpreting the site through public input sessions and Tribal consultation

- Several rounds of streambank stabilization in conjunction with the US Army Corps of Engineers

- A successful public-private partnership to raise funds for a new Visitor Orientation Plaza at the Hamm Road "Gateway" entrance to the National Archeological District. More than $1.2m was raised with a 1:1 federal to local match and construction is slated to begin in 2024.

- The National Trail of Tears Association Conference will be in Chattanooga in October 2024, hopefully coinciding with the ribbon cutting on the new Visitor Orientation Plaza. National Park Partners is partnering with the ToTA to plan activities commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 2004 land donation that established the National Archeological District. We've received a $50,000 grant from the Lyndhurst Foundation towards the commemoration activities and the City of Chattanooga Department of Parks and Outdoors is making Ross's Landing, Coolidge Park, and Renaissance Park available as an in-kind donation of venue space.

Fiction: We've been working on this hospital project for six years, why has no one come forward until now with all of this information? This is too little, too late.

Fact: No one thought the State would go back on their commitment to the Tribes and the National Park Service to relocate the hospital at the earliest opportunity. The message for years has been that the hospital is moving and the State is assessing other sites; remaining on Moccasin Bend was believed to not even be an option. National Park Partners was told as recently as late May that the decision was down to two alternate sites; then with no warning, we were alerted by the media that the State instead is proposing to remain on Moccasin Bend and rebuild on a smaller footprint. This is being billed as a "compromise" but instead it was a unilateral decision made behind closed doors and without stakeholder input. Had we the slightest idea that remaining on Moccasin Bend was possible, we would have come forward years ago with all of this information - we never imagined the State would go back on the commitments they made 20 years ago.