Diary of Orrin Brown—Oct 23, 1864

Diary of Orrin Brown, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Sunday–Oct. 23rd

I was quite sick all night on account of my cold but I feel a little better now and hope I shall get along. It was a little warmer last night but there has been quite a chilly wind blowing today. There was a large squad of men came in from Indiana this morning. They know no sunday in the army there is about 100 men out of this camp at work on the fortifycations today. I went up to the burrying ground this afternoon and went into a vault where there were a wooman and 4 children embalmed in metalic coffins, we went to work and made a tent out of our blankets, there is 7 of us in our mess all steady men, we do not draw more than 1/2 rations. There was 30 of our men called out tonight to stow away grain and other comisary stores at the depot, they worked 3 hours. I read 13 chapters in the testament today.

Gig City of the South

By 1864, Chattanooga had weathered battery and occupation by both the Confederate and Union armies.  Today, 150 years later, Chattanooga is a much different city—much bigger, and much better built.  Chattanooga is also a pioneer in internet infrastructure, a “Gig City” with broadband service of at least 1 gigabit per second.  That’s about 50 times faster than what you or I are likely to have, and light-years faster than much of America. Like my friends in (much smaller) rural Windom, Minnesota, the city led the way with their municipal utility dropping fiber to buildings across town, years before Google even heard of Kansas City.  This week, the city was one of the inaugural members of the Next Century Cities broadband economic development group, with other burgs as small as Winthrop, Minnesota, or Montrose, Colorado, and as large as Austin and San Antonio, Texas.

Chattanooga was a strategic center in the 19th century railroad economy, and today it is positioning itself as a strategic center of the 21st century.

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