The Mystery of Ruggles Ferry Pike

Dear Doc,

I live on a road called "Ruggles Ferry Pike."

The road appears to be divided into three parts. One section runs from John Sevier Highway (near the old River Breeze Drive-In Movie Theater) to Asheville Highway. The second section (the lengthiest) picks up a few hundred feet further east from where the first section terminates at Asheville Highway and connects to Andrew Johnson Highway. The third, and smallest section begins across AJ Highway from where the second section ends and winds up at Strawberry Plains Pike.

I know the road has been around a while (gravestones in an old, nameless cemetery near the roadside list death dates as far back as the early, early 1800's), and I would imagine the road's name would indicate that there was once a ferry owned by the Ruggles family near where the Asheville Highway river bridge is at present, but I can't find very much about it (or the family), if indeed the ferry was there.

Can you help a guy fill in some of the details of this ferry tale, Doc? I want to believe there is a history of buggies and riders and maybe even civil war soldiers streaming past where my house presently sits (even if the house itself is only a relatively recent addition to the community, historically speaking), but I can't find out very much about the Ruggles family or the ferry.

Thanks!

Dear Ale-ing Reader,

Indeed, Knoxville was once a veritable ferry land. A century and a half ago, the rivers were wild, bridges were hard to build, and you couldn't get very far hereabouts without dealing with a ferryman. Dozens of ferries crossed various points of the three rivers, and most of them went by multiple names over the years. Most of the names of the ferrymen have been forgotten. Mr. Ruggles is an exception. 

If barely. Personal information about him is scarce. But according to some obituaries on file at the McClung Collection, Ruggles Ferry Pike is named for James Ruggles, ca. 1829-1911, who ran a ferry across the Holston River in the latter part of the 19th century. On an 1895 map, a Mr. J. Ruggles is noted as living on the east side of the river at the site of the ferry, which crossed the river about where I-40 crosses it today. 

But Mr. Ruggles never knew Ruggles Ferry Pike by that name. When he died, at the ripe old age of 82, the road of which you speak was known as Armstrong Ferry Pike. The older name Armstrong, after the family of Irish immigrant James Armstrong, one of the area's earliest settlers, survives in a few geographical features in the Forks of the River area, including an island near the ferry site. 

Armstrong's Ferry Pike was in fact the address of the last home Mr. Ruggles shared with his wife, Isabella, near Chilhowee Park, and that may call for some further explanation. The road was known by that name all the way to its intersection with McCalla in semi-urban Burlington, to the Forks of the River area. 

Perhaps as a memorial for a beloved and well-remembered ferryman, the long road became better known as Ruggles Ferry Pike by 1925; but with suburban development in the Holston Hills area, parts of it got redeveloped and renamed. By the Jazz Age, references to ferries seemed old-fashioned, so by 1930, the town part of Ruggles Ferry Pike became known as Holston Drive, the name it has kept to this day. 

Yr. Obt. Svt.

Come one, come all! Dr. Knox answers your questions regarding the history of the Knoxville metropolis.