Then and Now: Rockmont Park

Sitting at the beginning of Old Wauhatchie Pike is a park which is currently maintained by the Lookout Mountain Conservancy.
It’s nationally renowned for its boulders, which are hugely popular with the climbing community.
Before it was a modern park, this little area, called Rock Mont Park, used to be a public space for the town of Saint Elmo.
Years before Saint Elmo became a de-facto part of Chattanooga, it was its own city with its own government and history.
In fact, it’s one of the oldest settlements in the Chattanooga area, but that’s probably a story for another day.
Saint Elmo’s Rockmont Park was just a small neighborhood park, but it had an amazing view of the valley below from its vantage point at the base of Lookout Mountain. You can imagine that churchgoers would walk from church street to the Rockmont Park and enjoy a nice picnic on a calm Sunday.
The modern Rockmont Park is larger than the original. You can still see the foundations of the homes which used to dot the scenic landscape. Unfortunately they were too run down to be preserved by the time the Lookout Mountain Conservancy took over the property a few decades ago.
This beautiful park is now publicly accessible, though the Conservancy asks that you sign a digital waiver first. If you’re brave, you can try to scale the boulders on the property, but please do so safely.
A hundred years ago it was a public park, now… it still is, just in a different form.