Picnooga, a crowdfunded local history project, celebrates its fifth year on Jan. 18. What started as a Facebook page sharing borrowed digital images of Chattanooga’s past became a physical archive with nearly 4,000 photographs and historical artifacts. Since 2014, Picnooga has shared over 19,000 images online. Its Flickr account has over 5.9 million individual views. In a partnership with DeepZoomChattanooga.com and the Tennessee State Library and Archives, Picnooga and its partners have published over 30,000 pages of searchable historical newspapers online.
Looking to the future of Chattanooga’s past, Picnooga officials announced in late 2018 initial plans for a physical historical venue that will highlight the area’s rich industrial history.
The Chattanooga Maker Center Museum of Industry will focus in 2019 on building a free mobile education program to benefit Hamilton County Schools and local community organizations. The future museum will offer Hamilton County students unlimited free admission.
Weekly online video conferences are being offered throughout the month of January and February. Picnooga is inviting the public to attend to learn more about the Chattanooga Maker Center and to recruit volunteers and like-minded individuals for input about the educational outreach programs and museum. Available dates for these online events can be found by visiting
https://chattanoogamakercenter.eventbrite.com. Registration is free but seats are limited for each date. Also visit
http://maker.center or
http://chattanoogamuseum.org for more information about the Chattanooga Maker Center.