Sale Creek might look little changed in recent years along U.S. 27, but it has actually had a number of people move into such nearby places as Flat Top Mountain just west and the area by Lake Chickamauga to the east.
But it is one former Sale Creek resident no longer around who Curtis Coulter had in mind when he tried to chronicle this North Hamilton County community.
“I had an acquaintance, David “Red” Gray, and I knew a thumbnail of history of what he knew,” said Mr.
Coulter. “But he died and took it all to the grave. I don’t want that to happen with the things I have.”
As a result, the 71-year-old retired educator has recently written the history book, “An Excursion to the Past – A History of Sale Creek and Coulterville, Tn.”
Mr. Coulter is a lifelong resident of Sale Creek and a descendant of the Coulter family that settled the area early and whose other members have been involved in such businesses as Coulter Funeral Home.
The former Sale Creek School and Loftis Middle School teacher had written some other histories related to Sale Creek, such as ones about the World War II veterans and the peach growing industry. But this current book came about indirectly over another war-like national emergency – the current coronavirus pandemic.
“This spring when COVID hit, I was looking for something to do,” he said with a laugh.
So, he wrote the print-style book and is ready to sell it through his website.
The detailed book covers the community from its early days 200-plus years ago to the present. It includes information about both greater Sale Creek, and the Coulterville community on the north end.
Among the unusual facts about Sale Creek, he said, are that it was the first English-named settlement in Hamilton County, and was the first community in the county settled in 1819 by settlers of European descent. It also had the first school for settlers’ children in the county, and also had the first Hamilton County church – Sale Creek Cumberland Presbyterian.
Also, Mr. Coulter said, Hamilton County’s first sheriff, Charles Gamble, who began serving in 1819, was a Sale Creek resident, and the first Hamilton County Schools superintendent, William McFarland Beene, who served from 1875-1877, was also from the community
Mr. Coulter said the Sale Creek name came from the fact that a militia under Evan Shelby came to the area in the late 1770s and surprised and defeated the Chickamauga Indians in the current East Brainerd area, and a “sale” of the confiscated goods was held.
“There were confiscated goods that would be worth $5.6 million today – pots, pans, guns and horses,” said Mr. Coulter, who in recent years met a Shelby descendant. “They destroyed 11 villages and headed up the river. When they got to the mouth of Sale Creek, they conducted the auction.”
Among the other history of note, Mr. Coulter said not a lot of Civil War action took place in Sale Creek, although the Cumberland Presbyterian church was used as a headquarters for Union Gen. James G. Spears.
After the war, though, Welsh-financed coal mining operations began in the area, and in 1880 the famous “Queen and Crescent” railroad line that linked in part Chattanooga and Cincinnati was completed and passed through Sale Creek.
The first recorded sale of property along the line to the Cincinnati Southern Railroad was Sale Creek/Coulterville land belonging to John Coulter, Thomas Coulter and Rebecca Coulter in 1875.
A now-razed train depot and train watering station sat by Coulterville Road across from the historic, still-standing and white-colored home of John J. Coulter, who was the brother of Mr. Coulter’s great-great-grandfather.
“It was a working depot,” said Mr. Coulter of the complex that still has some stone water tank supporter structures remaining.
Regarding the once-large peach industry that has been greatly reduced in size, Mr. Coulter said Sale Creek was able to grow peaches by planting trees on the upper slopes of the hills, and a wind would often keep an early spring freeze from damaging the crops.
While railroad cars would be used to ship all the peaches that once grew in the area, he said that Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina began growing them large scale in places where the land was flatter and the slightly milder climate was more conducive.
“Also, War War II came along, and after the war people didn’t want to work agriculture,” he said. “There were better paying industrial jobs.”
Many people outside Sale Creek know the community for the McDonald family that once operated the Home Stores and the Chattanooga Free Press and who still have a roughly 2,000-acre farm possibly scheduled to be sold as a county industrial park in the near future.
“McDonald Farm has been a Sale Creek institution since 1821, when James McDonald bought the first 600 acres and established it in the new county,” said Mr. Coulter. “Through the years the McDonalds have provided community and church leadership through James McDonald and his son, Ben McDonald.”
As an example, he said that from 1856 until the 1920s, the McDonald Mill operated in the community and served the area’s need for corn meal and wheat flour.
“During the Civil War, the mill ran night and day to provide flour and corn meal for the occupying armies – first the Confederate and later the Union Army in 1863. Beginning in 1933, the Home Stores provided well-stocked grocery stores as well as employment for the people of Sale Creek and Coulterville.”
In 1952, Roy McDonald built a creamery and warehouse in Sale Creek. “Those two facilities generated jobs for many Sale Creek area residents,” Mr. Coulter said. “Mr. Roy also employed prospective college students with summer jobs to enable them to pursue their college careers.”
He added that many older residents of Sale Creek fondly remember the gracious welcomes they received at McDonald Farm from Roy and Elizabeth when church picnics and school outings were conducted at their farm.
“Their doors were always open, and their swimming pool was always inviting. Those summer day activities provide nostalgic memories that will last for a lifetime,” he said, adding that the family attended Sale Creek Cumberland Presbyterian regularly before relocating to Lookout Mountain.
One interesting fact a lot of people do not know, Mr. Coulter said, is that the McDonald family actually did not own the farm for a period from about the end of World War I until Frank McDonald – father of publisher Roy McDonald – bought it back in the early 1930s The family later added more land.
Mr. Coulter admits to being a little nostalgic that some of the last vestiges of pretty and expansive farmland in North Hamilton County might be disappearing with the potential farm sale.
“McDonald Farm is a bucolic, picturesque, and serene escape from an otherwise hectic and busy world,” he said.
He does not want the memories of other aspects of Sale Creek’s history to disappear, either, and that motivated him to write the book.
“One of the reasons I wrote it is that I knew a lot of old people,” he said. “I had about 100 contributors on the book.”
The book, which was published by Foresight Book Publishers, is available through his website, coulterpublications.com, which also has his other books for sale. The total cost of the Sale Creek book with tax and book rate shipping and handling is $32.26. To order the book by mail at the same price, send a check payable to Curtis Coulter to Coulter Publications, P.O. Box 501, Sale Creek, TN 37373. Mr. Coulter can also be contacted at coulter_c@bellsouth.net.
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