This view looking toward the Shelton flour mill at the lower left was taken in 1895. It also shows the two-story house to the rear that the mill operator once occupied and the fine home at Walnut and Second where he eventually moved.
The Cheeburger Cheeburger building on lower Market Street that is partially collapsed and will soon be totally demolished started out as a flour mill in the centennial year of 1876.
The city has issued an emergency purchase order of $120,000 with Pates Demolition and Hauling to take it down. City officials said they then will place a lien on the property and are confident they will be repaid due to the value of the lot.
Clement Clay Shelton, who was born in Jackson County, Ala., in 1831, came to Chattanooga in 1871. He afterward moved his business operation from a small grocery to the flour mill located at 136-140 Market St.
He first lived in a neat, two-story brick house to the rear of the mill at the corner of Cherry and Second streets.
The Shelton Mills produced 150 barrels of flour per day that was shipped to several states.
C.C. Shelton was a pioneer in introducing the roller process of making flour.
The Sheltons sold their interst in the mill to the general manager, Ed M. Smith, in 1900. The consideration was said to be $50,000.
The firm had erected a new brick mill on Whiteside (South Broad) Street. The mill manufactured the "celebrated Hungarian Purity flour'' and used "the Hungarian system.''
The C.C. Sheltons moved one block east from behind the mill to a fine home on Walnut Street at Second near his kinsmen, Azariah Shelton and Elias Shelton.
Clement Clay Shelton married Mary Jane Baker, and they had a son, Clement Lee Shelton, who
married Jane Evans. Jane, a daughter of Clement Lee Shelton, married Robert Patten Williams, then R. Clayton Bowers. Another daughter, Mary, married George Clark, founder of Pioneer Bank.
Clement Lee Shelton died in 1957 when he was 80.
A portion of the old Shelton Mills building was renovated to house Cheeburger, Cheeburger and several other businesses. A dinner theater operated upstairs for a number of years.
The S&M Supply Company was the last occupant of the Shelton mill on South Market Street before it was torn down in the early 1980s.
The flour mill building by Second Street has long been one of the best illustrations of "Underground Chattanooga." Walking along Second (now called Aquarium Way), you can see windows that are almost totally covered by fill that was put in to help deal with flooding.
Workers at the Shelton Flour Mill