at the rate of $7.50 an acre. James Whiteside purchased 5,000 acres of land, including most of the northern end of Lookout Mountain. To encourage tourism, Whiteside built a turnpike up the mountain and a three-story hotel for tourists, which opened in 1855. Among the visitors was young writer Augusta Jane Evans, who became friends with Whiteside's daughter, Thankful Whiteside, and her husband, Abraham Malone Johnson. Evans was said to have quipped that the view toward Chattanooga from Lookout Mountain reminded her of the view of Naples, Italy from St. Elmo Castle. 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. The area took its name from the novel. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was the only American novel to sell more copies in the nineteenth century. Yellow fever and urban development A yellow fever epidemic in Chattanooga caused an exodus in 1878. Almost 12,000 people fled the city, many going to Lookout Mountain. 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. Complaints about the toll led to the 1879 construction of the St. Elmo Turnpike, which had an easier grade and a lower toll (the St. Elmo turnpike was paved and renamed the Adolph S. Ochs Highway in the late 1920s). Until the 1880s, the area at the foot of Lookout Mountain remained primarily a wooded area. 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. At the time, St. Elmo saw development resulting from both a general real estate and construction boom in the South and the 1893 expansion of an electric trolley from Chattanooga to St. Elmo. Connecting St. Elmo to Chattanooga The trolley was not the only transportation development to influence the history of St. Elmo. In 1887, the narrow-gauge Incline #1 ran cars from St. Elmo up to the bluffs of Lookout Mountain. Soon after, a broad-gauge