When does an unidentified flying object become a UFO?
by Jack Neely
It appeared in 1910, the night before the big election. Former Mayor Sam Heiskell was running against Mayor John Brooks. Profoundly resentful that Knoxville had voted itself dry back in '07 against his advice, Heiskell had begun a nationwide campaign against prohibition. In Illinois, he annoyed some hometown folks when he claimed that prohibition was ruining Knoxville, that people were leaving in droves, abandoning their houses.
Staub's Theater was between shows, but its cross-street competition, the brand-new Bijou, was showing an extravaganza called "The Sunny Side of Broadway." It promised "one of the prettiest bunches of chorus girls seen in this city in some time" and featured the hit, "Every Town Has a Post Office And a Wise, Wise Girl."
Basketball was the big new fad. At Woodruff's Hardware, you could buy basketballs for six bucks, as well as "basketball suits." Everybody was playing everybody else. UT had a team. The YMCA had a team. Maryville College had a team. Park City, the East Knoxville neighborhood, had a team. Even some residential streets, like Rose Avenue, had their own teams. One of the most feared was a group of young businessmen called "the Business Boys."
At the big Quonset-style Auditorium at Gay and Main, the School for the Deaf's team—called "the Deaf and Dumb Five" and "the mutes" on the sports page—was about to play Knoxville High.
Just after dark, some were looking toward the sky. "HALLEY'S COMET is rapidly approaching the earth," went a striking ad for H.J. Cook & Co., which sold telescopes. Halley's Comet wasn't due for another three months, but they claimed the comet "can be seen in the sky during the early evening by the aid of a small glass."
Unidentified except as "well-known citizens," two men were looking skyward on Summit Hill, the steep hill on the north side of downtown, maybe hoping to catch the glimpse of the comet. Just after dark—not quite 7 p.m.—they spotted "a large airship...bound in a southerly direction..." They said its outline was distinct and that "sparks could be seen from its motors...the hum of the machinery could be heard. The airship appeared to them to be a dirigible balloon."
It was surprising, sure enough. Maybe even eerie, as big balloons are even today, even when they say Budweiser on the side. You didn't see a dirigible every day, then or now.
I recently picked up a paperback called Strange Tales Of the Dark And Bloody Ground: Authentic Accounts Of Restless Spirits, Haunted Honky-Tonks, And Eerie Events In Tennessee.
The title is inspired by Dragging Canoe, the uncompromising Cherokee chief who wanted the white man off his property; his parting shot at us was said to have been a curse upon this "dark and bloody ground."
It's an admirable book, the sort of book that's fun to read at night, by the light of a 40-watt bulb in a quiet room of an old house. I opened it, confident I'd find plenty of weird Knoxville stories: the Beast of Middlebrook Pike, maybe, or the Curse of the White Mule, the Gay Street fireball of 1860, or Abner Baker's apparitions. However, though Bloody Ground has entire chapters about Nashville and Memphis, there's not much about Knoxville except one mention in a chapter called "Tennessee Valley Apparitions." It's just another cigar-shaped UFO cliché. And we have to share that one with Chattanooga. For about three days in January, 1910, a big airborne object cruised back and forth up and down the Tennessee Valley. It was last seen in Knoxville, by those men on Summit Hill, that Friday evening.
Anyway, I'd never heard that story, and was grateful for the tip. To herald the fourth East Tennessee-based X-Files episode on TV this week, I thought I'd look into it myself.
As it turns out, the author enhances the mystery by overstating a few things. He says there were only four lighter-than-air vehicles "known to exist" in the U.S. in 1910, and not one of them was in the South. Here, he states, dirigibles were "virtually nonexistent."
You've got to admire writers who dare to be that certain of their facts. I read that as I drank Scotch out of my tin souvenir whiskey cup from the 1907 Jamestown, Virginia, Fair. There's a tiny scene of that exposition which depicts several dirigibles aloft. Maybe they'd all been shot down by 1910.
As it happens, I also ran across a picture of a dirigible floating over Chilhowee Park in 1910. It's in Steve Ash's book, Meet Me At the Fair! Dirigibles became such a symbol of the 1910 Appalachian Exposition in Knoxville, that even the Quaker Oats kiosk had a miniature version of one. Granted, the exposition commenced a few months later than this Summit Hill dirigible's appearance.
The author also states the UFO of 1910 was traveling impossibly fast. "One cannot help but conclude that the object...was not of this earth." But Bloody Ground states that the Chattanooga UFO was visible traveling in the same direction for fully 10 minutes before it disappeared behind a cloud. When your UFO is visible for 10 minutes, is high speed an issue?
I haven't seen the Chattanooga reports, but the Knoxville newspaper accounts I found didn't make claims about impossible speeds. They just said it was "a dirigible balloon." It did make the newspaper, a tiny item on the bottom of page 7 of the Journal.
I hate to spoil a good story. Then, as now, it was indeed unusual to see a dirigible when it wasn't here for some well-publicized event, and the short news accounts do add "the identity of the aircraft is a mystery." So it was indeed a UFO. If only literally.
Despite the storytelling liberties, I enjoyed Strange Tales of the Dark and Bloody Ground. Call me Scully if you want to, but the 1910 Tennessee Valley UFO doesn't seem eerie. It just seems interesting.
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