Point Park

Sixteen acres on the nose of Lookout Mountain, with the overlooks, monuments and cannon positions that every photograph of this city is taken from. It is the reason Chattanooga looks the way it does from above.

It is also the only fee area in the entire Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park: ten dollars a head, good for seven days, free under sixteen, thirty-five dollars for an annual pass. Card only. Everything else in the park - Chickamauga Battlefield, Cravens House, Signal Point, Moccasin Bend, the rest of Lookout Mountain Battlefield - is free.

The battlefield around it runs to roughly three thousand acres with about thirty miles of trail. The visitor centre, a stone building at the entrance, holds James Walker's original painting The Battle Above the Clouds - painted by a man who watched it happen.

Touring is along a rock and paved path around the perimeter with benches, and the visitor centre is fully accessible. The Ochs Museum and Observatory is the one part that is not, and the Park Service publishes a 27-minute accessibility video rather than leaving you to guess.

Two practical notes: the free lot fills quickly, and the Cravens House lot below is free with a 1.5-mile trail up. A section of Bluff Trail has been closed since 15 September - the Park Service's stated reason is an aggressive barred owl, and no end date is given.