Tennessee Aquarium

When Chattanoogans set out to revive their downtown in the 1980s, they went back to the riverbank where the city began, the site of John Ross's trading post. A planning process called Vision 2000 started in 1984, architecture students from the University of Tennessee first floated the idea of an aquarium, and the Tennessee Riverpark Master Plan of 1985 made it a centerpiece. The aquarium opened on May 1, 1992.

The first building, River Journey, follows a raindrop from the Appalachian Mountains through the Tennessee River to the Mississippi Delta and then to great rivers on other continents. It was built as one of the first large aquariums devoted to river life. Close to home, the Tennessee River gallery holds paddlefish and channel catfish in a large Nickajack Lake tank, and the Appalachian Cove Forest has River Otter Falls and native fish. A second building, Ocean Journey, opened in 2005.

The Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute, its research arm, works to restore freshwater ecosystems in the Southeast. The riverfront around it was rebuilt in the same years. The Walnut Street Bridge reopened as a pedestrian bridge in 1993, and Coolidge Park followed on the north shore in 1999. Ross's Landing, next door, carries the Cherokee and Muscogee history of this same bank.