Hundreds of properties in the neighborhood were listed on the National Register in 1982, and in 1996 St. Elmo was designated a Local Historic District.

Between 1777 and 1782, the so-called "Chickamaugas" also had a town called Tsatanugi (or Chatanuga, based on the Muscogee word cvto - rock), near here along Chattanooga Creek.

Their youngest son, John Ross, was the leader of the Cherokee Nation who would call for passive resistance to the federal Indian removal policies that led to the Trail of Tears in 1838.

After the American Civil War and in need to cash, Evans published a novel set in the vicinity about a young woman whose Christian virtue redeems a cynical lothario named Clinton St. Elmo.

Titled St. Elmo, the novel appeared in 1866 to great success, selling more than a million copies within four months of its publication date.

[2] Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was the only American novel to sell more copies in the nineteenth century.

At the time, the mountain was accessible on the north side only by a four-hour trip up the old Whiteside Turnpike, which was built in the 1850s and cost a toll of two dollars.

The real boom in the growth of St. Elmo as a residential community coincided with the planning and development of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, which was dedicated in 1890.

Chattanooga Commissioner Ed Bass took matters into his own hands on the night of May 6, when he and a crew of city workers bulldozed enough of the buildings to establish a right-of-way for cars.