Community of Marion County, Tennessee

Whiteside

A census-designated place at the Georgia line, built around a 19th-century railroad stop

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Last updated: April 22, 2026

Whiteside is a small community at the southern tip of Marion County, wedged into the narrow sliver of land between the Tennessee River Gorge and the Georgia state line. It grew around a stop on the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in the 1850s, took its name from one of the line's principal promoters, and became one of the most photographed points on the Union Army's supply chain during the Civil War. A 780-foot wooden trestle bridge over Running Water Creek, burned and rebuilt in the course of the Chattanooga campaign, is the community's best-documented feature from the 19th century.

Four-tiered wooden railroad trestle bridge over Running Water Creek near Whiteside, photographed by George N. Barnard, 1864
The U.S. Military Railroads trestle bridge over Running Water Creek near Whiteside, Tennessee, on January 8, 1864. The four-tiered, 780-foot structure was rebuilt by the 1st Michigan Engineers after Confederate forces destroyed the original on their retreat from Chattanooga. Photograph by George N. Barnard (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

Setting

Whiteside sits at about 800 feet in elevation, in the valley floor between Raccoon Mountain to the north and the Tennessee state line to the south. Running Water Creek, which gives the area its oldest surviving place name, flows through the community on its way down to the Tennessee River at the mouth of the gorge. Interstate 24 runs east-west along the valley floor, crossing the creek on a modern bridge not far from the alignment of the 19th-century railroad. Nickajack Lake lies a few miles to the west, and the Georgia town of Lookout Mountain is just across the line to the south.

Cherokee origins and the name “Running Water”

The valley along the creek was part of the Cherokee Lower Towns in the late 18th century. The Cherokee name for the general Running Water area was Amogayunayi; the Cherokee town of Running Water proper was a Chickamauga stronghold founded by Dragging Canoe in 1779, a few miles downstream near the mouth of Running Water Creek at the Tennessee River. See the Nickajack and Running Water page for the Cherokee town itself; the Whiteside community, by contrast, is a 19th-century railroad-era settlement that took the creek's name as one of its earliest railroad-stop designations before being renamed.

Col. James A. Whiteside and the railroad

The community's modern name comes from Col. James Anderson Whiteside (1803–1861), one of Chattanooga's foundational 19th-century figures. Whiteside was born near Danville, Kentucky, trained briefly as a physician, read law at Pikeville, and was elected to the Tennessee legislature at twenty-four. In 1838 he moved his family to Ross's Landing, the settlement that would become Chattanooga, and spent the rest of his career promoting the railroads and hotels that built the city.

Whiteside was a major stockholder in the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, the line that ran west from Chattanooga along the valley floor and crossed the Tennessee and Alabama state line at Bridgeport. In 1857 he left Chattanooga for Nashville to take over as vice-president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway, which eventually absorbed the ET&G. He died on November 12, 1861, early in the Civil War. The railroad stop in Marion County had been carrying station names of Aetna, Etna, and Running Water; within a few years of his death, the community around the stop was known as Whiteside.

The Running Water trestle and the Civil War

In the 1863 Chattanooga campaign, the railroad through Whiteside became one of the most important supply lines in the Union advance. Confederate forces destroyed the original wooden trestle bridge over Running Water Creek as they retreated. In December 1863 and January 1864, the 1st Michigan Engineers rebuilt it: a four-tiered timber viaduct 780 feet long, carrying the U.S. Military Railroads track across the creek at a substantial height above the valley floor.

George N. Barnard, the Army photographer assigned to document the campaign, recorded the rebuilt bridge on January 8, 1864. His photograph, which survives in the collection of the Library of Congress and the Art Institute of Chicago, shows the bridge, the surrounding guard camp, and the steep terrain of the valley, and is the single most reproduced image of wartime Whiteside. A second bridge at the same location was later washed away during the flood of 1867, and the line was rebuilt again in the decades that followed.

The railroad has operated continuously through Whiteside since the 1850s, with the line passing to NC&StL control after the war and subsequently to the Louisville and Nashville and CSX systems. A 986-foot railroad tunnel built in this area in 1858 and later associated with Col. Whiteside's name was donated in 1968 to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum; the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 (NRHP 78002595). Some accounts place this tunnel nearer the Chattanooga end of the line; the exact location is not consistently reported across the available sources.

Present day

Whiteside today is a small, rural community of just under 300 people. The 2020 census counted 274 residents across 3.96 square miles, giving the CDP a density of roughly 69 people per square mile. The state-designated area covers the modern hamlet along TN-134 and the corridor of Interstate 24. The landscape is a mix of small homes, pasture, and forested ridge; the Georgia state line is visible at the end of some southbound driveways. A community church, Whiteside Baptist, anchors the settlement today.

Related

Tennessee River Gorge →
Nickajack and Running Water (Cherokee towns) →
Haletown and Guild →
Transportation and railroads →

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