Why this park
About nine miles northeast of downtown Chattanooga, Booker T. Washington State Park covers about 400 acres on Chickamauga Lake, close to TVA's Chickamauga Dam. It is a day-use park of picnic grounds, a fishing pier, a boat ramp and some eight miles of wooded trail, most of it shared by hikers and mountain bikers.
What makes the place worth drawing is the reason it was built. Under segregation, Black Tennesseans could use only two state parks, this one and T.O. Fuller in Memphis, while Harrison Bay, about six miles away on the same lake, was for white visitors. The picture to start from is the one the rangers point to: the sun going down over the lake, and the fishing pier, where a great blue heron often stands on the roof.
The story
The park's namesake was born enslaved in Virginia in 1856, the National Park Service says, and in 1881 he founded the school in Tuskegee, Alabama, that grew into Tuskegee Institute. The park's group lodge is named for the Tuskegee Airmen, and its assembly hall for Margaret Murray Washington, a Fisk graduate who became Tuskegee's lady principal and his wife.
In 1937, the Tennessee Encyclopedia says, the state went looking for an East Tennessee site for a park for African Americans. Officials leaned toward Norris Lake, near Knoxville, but Hamilton County's planners pressed for Chattanooga, home to 38,000 Black residents. On September 28, 1938, the park's management plan says, TVA leased the state 350 acres beside the reservoir it created in 1940.
Harrison Bay came into the state system in 1938 too, with 1,199 acres, notes Katharine Bloom, whose 2008 University of Georgia dissertation studies the two Black parks. On June 22, 1939, the management plan says, Company 3459, a Black CCC company, was hired to build the park, and that August the Chattanooga Times found about 175 young men in camp, pulling stumps. World War II stopped the work. A 1948 state building plan then proposed just over $100,000 for this park and nearly $400,000 for Harrison Bay, which was to finish its pool and add 20 cabins while this park was to get a swimming beach.
What the CCC left is disputed. The park's page points to CCC structures still standing, and the management plan counts the retaining wall of an old wading pool as CCC-era. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says the corps only cleared land and made plans, and that contract crews built what the state dedicated in 1950: a pool, bathhouses, picnic shelters and ball fields. The park's managers had to be Black and college-educated, Bloom found, while a white park's manager needed a high school diploma and a year's experience in conservation work.
From 1954 the NAACP pressed the state to open its 13 white parks. Park officials held off until 1962, Bloom writes, when a spoken order from the governor desegregated the system, and Tennessee's State Library and Archives also dates the change to 1962.
When to go, and what to wear
Winter brings the birds. The park calls its loons a major draw in the colder months, best seen from the platform at the end of the Scenic Trail, and a pair of bald eagles nests in the park. At Chattanooga's Lovell Field airport, about six miles south, January averages a high near 51°F and a low near 32°F, so wear a sweatshirt under a windproof jacket, add a warm hat for the open shore, and bring binoculars.
Spring is wet: March is the wettest month, so pack a rain shell. April averages a high near 74°F and a low near 50°F, wildflowers such as bloodroot, trillium and mayapple come up, and songbirds migrate through the hills the bike trails cross. The park says spring brings the best crappie fishing.
Summer is hot. July averages a high near 91°F and a low near 71°F, so go early, in a light tee, and carry water. The management plan warns of more poison ivy than usual along parts of the Outer Loop, so long pants are worth the heat there.
Fall is the driest season: October averages a high near 74°F and a low near 51°F, with less rain than any other month.
Know before you go
- This is a day-use park that closes at sunset, with no tent or RV camping; the only overnight stays are in the group camp and the group lodge.
- Swimming from the shore is not allowed, and the old pool no longer opens; the state's 2025 response to public comments calls it the park's former swimming pool.
- Bring your own boat, the park says. It has a launch ramp, a large fishing pier and an accessible kayak and canoe launch, open May through September while the water is high. Anglers 13 and older need a Tennessee fishing license.
- In 2025 the state said it saw an urgent need to deal with deteriorating trail bridges and shoreline erosion, so watch your footing on the bridges. The management plan calls for keeping bikes off the trails while they are wet.
- Hours, fees and closures change, so check Booker T. Washington State Park's page before you go.
Sources: Tennessee Encyclopedia, "Booker T. Washington State Park" (Ruth D. Nichols); Katharine C. Bloom, "The Evolution of a System: A Tale of Two Traditionally African-American State Parks in Tennessee," PhD dissertation, University of Georgia (2008); Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Booker T. Washington State Park Strategic Management Plan 2023–2033 (updated 2025) and its response to public comments (2025); Tennessee State Library and Archives, "Young men diving at the swimming pool in T.O. Fuller State Park" (1967); Tennessee National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni, CCC monument at the park (1990), as transcribed on Waymarking.com; National Park Service, "Virginia: Booker T. Washington" and Booker T. Washington National Monument; Sheena Harris Hayes, "Margaret Murray Washington," Encyclopedia of Alabama (2026); Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, "Chickamauga Reservoir"; Trish Milburn, "Segregation to Destination," The Tennessee Magazine (2021); NOAA, U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, Chattanooga Lovell Field station; Booker T. Washington State Park, tnstateparks.com.
