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As we sat on a high perch, a brightly colored Incline Railway car gradually inched toward us up Lookout Mountain’s steep slope. Below us stretched a patchwork of homes, stores, factories and roads built on somewhat level ground between notches in mountains and lofty ridges.

Had we sat in the same spot years ago, we wouldn’t have enjoyed the view.

“Air pollution was so bad that my father built a garage so he could house his new car inside so the air pollution wouldn't corrode the paint,” said Benic Clark III, president of the Lyndhurst Foundation. Water in the nearby Tennessee River was just as polluted, leading journalist Walter Cronkite to name Chattanooga, Tennessee, as “America’s most poll

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