Ogle's Cabin: The First Gatlinburg Historic Site

Around 1802, William Ogle selected a building site for what was to be the first "home" to be built in Gatlinburg. After cutting the logs for the cabin, he returned to South Carolina to get his family. He told them that he had found "The Land of Paradise" in the mountains of East Tennessee. While preparing to bring his family here, he fell ill, probably with malaria, and died in 1803.

In 1807, widowed Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, at age 46 or 47, came to her late-husband's "Paradise" with her five sons and two daughters, her brother, Peter Huskey, and his family. From William's oral directions, they located his hewed logs, completed the cabin, and started a new life. Great grandson Andrew Ogle and his family were the last of the clan to live in the cabin, abandoning it about 1910.

The farm was sold to Pi Beta Phi as the settlement school expanded in 1921. They used this cabin as a hospital. From 1922 to 1926, it housed a museum of mountain artifacts. The cabin was moved a short distance away from its original site to the former site of the community's first church building. (Arrowmont Campus on the Parkway)

Pi Beta Phi Settlement School

In the early 1900s, Gatlinburg was still a remote mountain village located in an even more remote Appalachian region where public schools did not exist. In 1910, the alumni of the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity, voted to commemorate their 50th anniversary and honor the founders by providing education to a community where no formal schooling had been available. Although technically called a fraternity, Pi Beta Phi was a national women's organization. It was the first of its kind in the U. S., and had a long-standing tradition of helping others, especially the under-privileged. The provision for basic education was later expanded to include vocational and home economics training for the community's adults. E. E. Ogle, with persuasion from the community, sold 35 acres of land to Pi Beta Phi for the establishment of this school. Many area residents were educated here, and the school's focus on reestablishing and promoting local craft skills helped establish Gatlinburg as a prominent arts and crafts center. Many of its original buildings have been refurbished and are still used today. The school opened in an unused church building in March 1912 with an initial enrollment of 13 students. In 1921, the school expanded by acquiring an additional 35 acres. Today it is known as the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. (556 Parkway)

First Baptist Church

Religion was important to the settlers and is a large part of the Great Smoky Mountain history. Before they had church buildings, they held services outside or in homes. Although this area was settled by Presbyterians, their first church was Baptist. History records that the White Oak Flats "arm" of the Sevierville Baptist Church convened in the early 1800s on Baskins Creek, probably at the present location of the Ogle cabin. Under the guidance of the Reverend Richard Evans, a second church was built on River Road near the mouth of Mill (now Le Conte) Creek, and in 1837, they formed a new church and called it White Oak Flats Baptist. The congregation met in a log cabin on Baskins Creek, which also served as a school. The first frame church building was constructed in 1875, at the corner of the Parkway and Baskins Creek Road (see historic plaque on the sidewalk). The congregation changed its name to Gatlinburg Baptist Church in 1932; in 1951, they constructed a landmark stone church at the same location. As businesses crowded around them, First Baptist moved to its present location on Highway 321, east of downtown, in 1991.

Ogle Store

Noah Ogle was Gatlinburg's first merchant of record, establishing a store in 1850 on a site that later became the Riverside Hotel. In 1910, he moved the store to the intersection of River Road and the Elkmont Highway. Ephraim E. Ogle took over his father's store around 1916; and until 1925, the E. E. Ogle and Company store housed the Gatlinburg Post Office. Grandson, Charlie A. Ogle, and great grandson, Charles Earl Ogle, continued the family tradition. Through the years the store expanded, spreading out, rambling, and jutting about as new merchandise was added. You could purchase almost anything in that store, from hairpins to threshing machines, "if they could find it." The quaint old general store and adjacent tourist cabins were torn down in the mid 1970s to make way for the Mountain Mall. The Ogles, descended from the area's first settlers, have played a major role in the city's development. (611 Parkway)

So take a trek on The Tennessee Heritage Trail in Gatlinburg and experience all of our culture and history for yourself!