The University of the South

The ceremony on Lookout Mountain came long before the school did. Trustees met in July 1857, and the Sewanee site was chosen that November. The cornerstone was laid in 1860 before eight bishops and several thousand people, but the Civil War broke the plan, and by 1866 the stone had been blown apart and forest had reclaimed the clearing. Bishop Charles Quintard rebuilt it, preaching 250 sermons in 180 days in England to raise 2,500 pounds. Classes opened on September 18, 1868, with nine students and four professors, a week before the deed would have expired.

What the plaque says

The University of The South Founded here July 4, 1857, when its first trustees, representing Episcopal dioceses in ten Southern states, met to adopt the plan of Bishop (later Confederate General) Leonidas Polk for a university to be sponsored by the Episcopal Church. Following the colorful ceremony here, a second meeting of the Board was held in Montgomery, Alabama, in November, 1857, and Sewanee, Tennessee was chosen as the site.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Point Park on Lookout Mountain — 0.8 mi
  The Tennessee end of Lookout Mountain, where a ten-acre Park Service memorial overlooks Moccasin Bend and the November 1863 fight called the Battle Above the Clouds.
• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 4.0 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.
• Ross's Landing — 4.5 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.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 4.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Randolph Miller — 1.3 mi
• Sallie A. Crenshaw — 1.9 mi
• Battle of Wauhatchie — 2.2 mi
• Carver Memorial Hospital — 4.0 mi