Explore Gatlinburg’s Most Historic Places

In 1802, South Carolinian William Ogle selected a building site for his family known near modern-day Downtown Gatlinburg, an area he deemed “The Land of Paradise.” Ogle cut and hewed the logs for the home he planned to build there for his wife Martha Jane, their five sons and two daughters.

Sadly, William fell ill and died in 1803. His wife Martha Jane was determined to bring their vision to reality, returning to Tennessee with her children and her brother Peter Huskey and his family. Martha Jane built Gatlinburg’s first home, the Ogle Cabin, still standing today in front of the McMahan Parkway Parking Garage.  

Modern-day Gatlinburg was first known as White Oak Flats because of the abundance of stately trees. In 1817, a group of locals met to discuss forming a Baptist church. In June of 1837, the church was officially constituted. What was originally White Oak Flats Baptist Church was renamed First Baptist Church of Gatlinburg. By 1937, the church had grown to accommodate more than 500 congregants. Today, it remains one of Gatlinburg’s most thriving houses of worship.

Martha Jane and William Ogle’s great-grandson Noah “Bud” Ogle rose to prominence as Gatlinburg’s first merchant in the mid-1800s. He built his own cabin here in 1850, which stands to this day. When Radford Gatlin opened the first post office in 1856, the town’s name was officially changed to Gatlinburg.

How did an arts and crafts school emerge from an institution created to educate the underprivileged in Appalachia? It’s a story for the ages. Started as a national service project by the nation’s first women’s fraternity, the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School opened here in 1912 to teach underprivileged children. By 1914 Pi Beta Phi had erected a modern six-room schoolhouse with 75 pupils.

The school launched community programs including training in craftsmanship, encouraging the production of handmade mountain wares by local makers. A cottage industry blossomed from 1926, marketed nationally under the name Arrowcraft. By 1964, Pi Beta Phi voted to launch a year-round arts and center named Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, an institution which educates artists and artisans to this day.

Gatlinburg’s creative spirit is so much a part of who we are as a town that it could never be confined to a single institution, organization or district. Our town boasts a plethora of creative businesses and an entire neighborhood of makers, living and creating for almost a century in the Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community.

From the earliest days of Gatlinburg, locals practiced their arts and crafts downtown. Sometimes they worked in studios and galleries, and often they spilled out to the streets to demonstrate their talents. In 1937, woodcarver John Cowden and several others decided to “go home” and set up craft shops to the Glades, where many of them lived. Leaving downtown, they set up their own shops, studios and galleries in or near their homes.

Today the Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community is the largest organization of independent artisans in North America and designated as a Tennessee Heritage Arts & Crafts Trail.

In 1916, Andrew “Andy” Jackson Huff founded Mountain View Hotel where Fun Mountain parking now stand. The Huffs’ hospitality lives on today in Jack Huff’s Motor Lodge. Additionally, Andy Huff’s daughter and her family, the Lawsons, opened the Historic Rocky Waters Inn in 1935. The establishment was recently renovated by the Patel family, the second owners in its almost century-long history.

The song Rocky Top is part of Tennessee lore, far beyond the bounds of Gatlinburg. Locals know it was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant right here at the Historic Gatlinburg Inn, built by R.L Maples in 1937 and still operating to this day.

Family-owned Greystone Lodge on the River continues the legacy of the historic Hotel Greystone, built by Dick Whaley in 1941 where Ripley’s Aquarium now stands.

If you’ve ever stepped foot in our town, you know that family-friendly attractions have kept folks coming back here season after season for generations. In the mid-1900s, Gatlinburg experienced a boom of tourism development, with shops and developments opening each decade.

The Maples family opened our first chairlift in 1954, literally taking tourists to the next level at Gatlinburg SkyPark. Another classic came to be in 1960, the Gerdings opened the first specialty pancake house in Tennessee, Pancake Pantry.

Ober Mountain’s origins trace back to 1962, when it first opened as Gatlinburg Ski Resort. Swiss developers built Tennessee’s own Aerial Tramway in 1973, and the resort took the moniker Ober Gatlinburg in 1977. More European flair came to Gatlinburg in 1970, when The Village and its old world shops were built with architectural inspiration from faraway locales such as Italy and Germany. Also opened in 1970, the Gatlinburg Space Needle takes inspiration from the Seattle Space Needle and soars at more than 400 feet. That same year, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the first of many Ripley’s attractions in Gatlinburg, opened. While it completely burned in 1992, it was rebuilt in 1995.

It’s not just fun and games in Gatlinburg. Spookiness came home to the Smokies in 1980, when Vincent “Val” Valentine opened the Mysterious Mansion of Gatlinburg, the oldest haunted attraction in the region. Lantern-led ghost and history tours Appalachian Ghostwalks followed suit. 

Then quirk came to town in 2002, the year Belgian archaeologist Andrea Ludden launched the world’s only Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum.

Gatlinburg was developed at the doorstep of the most visited national park in America, the Great Smoky Mountains. Chartered by the United States Congress in 1934, the park was officially dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Newfound Gap on the Tennessee-North Carolina line in September 1940. Today, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park encompasses 522,419 acres available for local residents and travelers from all over the world to explore and enjoy.

While most visitors to the area recognize the park’s natural beauty – from waterfalls and wildflowers to trails and bears – there are less-known, equally fascinating facts about its history.

You may have heard of Elkmont for its campground or synchronous fireflies, but did you know it’s also a ghost town and the cradle of Smoky Mountain tourism? It’s a long and winding story that begins in 1845, when one of the area’s first white settlers, Robert Trentham, built a cabin in the area. Robert’s son Levi would later sell around 80,000 acres to a prosperous Pennsylvania businessman named W.B. Townsend, who established a logging company and began operations in 1901.

Townsend established the town of Elkmont as the logging company’s base and built a sawmill nearby. He began laying railroad tracks and opened the Little River Railroad Company to haul materials and labor. Popular for his investment in the area, in 1903 the town of Townsend was renamed in his honor. Tracks for the railroad were completed in 1908, and activity and interest in Elkmont accelerated.

To help fund the expensive railroad operation, the Little River Railroad Company hitched an observation car to the logging train running between Townsend and Knoxville, charging riders a small fee. Passengers journeyed the 2.5 hours up the mountain and back on the so-called Elkmont Special. Folks with means began enjoying regular day trips with their families and soon wanted more permanent accommodations.

A group of wealthy Knoxville businessmen purchased land in the area to establish a retreat for their families. Between 1910 and 1935, they built 80 cabins and a high-society getaway near Elkmont called the Appalachian Club in Daisy Town. Appalachian Club members back from a trip out west eventually became the catalysts for the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. By 1925, the lumber company had finished logging the Elkmont area, pulled up all the rails, closed the bustling town of 1,500 workers and began logging an area known as Tremont. With the park’s designation as public lands, over time all privately owned parcels became public land.

Many of the Daisy Town cabins still stand abandoned to this day, while the restored 3,000-square-foot Appalachian Clubhouse is available to rent for private parties. History buffs will enjoy strolling back in time to visit the Elkmont Historic District that inspired the most popular national park in America.

One of the most visited areas in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cades Cove was home to hundreds in the centuries before the park’s establishment. First a Cherokee hunting ground for the valley’s abundant deer, elk, bison, and bears, it was inhabited by European settlers in the 1820s. By the 1850s, it was a bustling community of nearly 700 who had cleared the land for farming and built log homes, barns, corncribs and smokehouses.

Life was busy in Cades Cove of the 1800s, where fertile land made for successful farming and abundant crops. Settlers had large families and an agrarian lifestyle that relied heavily on working together with neighbors. Still, residents made time to get together, establishing a Baptist and Methodist church and schools for the children. The community thrived for more than a century, before the states of Tennessee and North Carolina began purchasing land for the National Park. While some residents signed life leases to stay on their land, the way of life at Cades Cove changed dramatically. The last school in Cades Cove closed in 1944, with the post office shuttering in 1947.

Now a designated historic area, the National Park Service maintains Cades Cove as it looked in its most vibrant era. Step back in time by spending a leisurely day exploring this area once defined by hard work.

The storied Huff family, famous for Gatlinburg hospitality, extended their tourism operations in 1926. Andrew Huff’s mountaineer son Jack and his wife Pauline established LeConte Lodge on the third highest peak in the Smokies, Mount LeConte – at 6,593 feet. It’s the very spot where a tent camp was erected in 1925 by Paul Adams to entertain dignitaries visiting from Washington, D.C. when efforts to establish the park were in full swing. Now under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, tourists may book a stay and step back in time. 

The establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was a win for tourists, but it came at a high cost for many local settlers. The peaks and hollows had become home during the late 1800s to hard-working settlers who braved the terrain to carve out a life for themselves and their families.

One such family was the Walkers, whose father John and mother Margaret Jane established a home in the Little Greenbrier Cove area in 1866. The Walkers raised eleven children – seven girls and four boys – and built a self-sustained life on their 122-acre homestead. John and his son built the Little Greenbrier School, which stands to this day, to serve as a schoolhouse, gathering place and Primitive Baptist church until 1925 at the center of the growing community.

While the Walker sons married and moved away, only one of the Walker sisters did. The remaining six stayed home and ran the family homestead together. When the park was established and their neighbors responded to offers to purchase their land and move away, the Walker sisters refused. With Roosevelt’s official establishment of the park in 1940, the sisters received a lifetime lease on their home. They remained at the park for the rest of their long lives and made a living selling tourists handmade doilies and toys, fried apple pies, and even original poems. To this day, the Walker Sisters Cabin is a reminder of a bygone way of life and inspiring mountain grit.

Running from Georgia to Maine, the Appalachian Trail is an undisputed national treasure established in 1937 and spanning 14 states. Its 76-mile section in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park traces the Tennessee-North Carolina border and is beloved for its verdant flora and abundant fauna. The Appalachian Trail peaks at Clingmans Dome in the Smokies, reaching the highest point on its entire 2,200-mile span – 6,644 feet.