Ernest Walter Holmes, Sr.

Holmes began with a friend's flipped Model T. After the car went into a ditch, he rigged his 1913 Cadillac with an iron chain, a pulley and several poles to haul it out and tow it to his garage. His patents rested on a split-boom wrecker that could anchor on one side while lifting a car up a steep embankment from the other. A few wreckers went to the federal government near the end of World War I, and in World War II his company supplied thousands to the Allies. He died in 1945.

What the plaque says

Ernest Walter Holmes, Sr. 1883-1945 Born in 1883, Ernest Walter Holmes, Sr., opened Chattanooga's first independent auto-repair garage at 318 Market Street. Here in 1916 he invented the twin-boom wrecker. Holmes pioneered and patented numerous improvements in the towing and recovery industry. He expanded his company into an international enterprise. Manufacturer of the first military wrecker during World War II, he supplied thousands of twin-boom wreckers to the allied forces from 1941 through 1945.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Aquarium — 0.2 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Ross's Landing — 0.4 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 0.4 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.
• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 0.6 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.

More markers nearby

• Chattanooga's First School — 0.2 mi
• William "Uncle Bill" Lewis — 0.3 mi
• Abby Crawford Milton — 0.4 mi
• First Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the United States — 0.5 mi