Gatlinburg's Ogle Family

Gatlinburg, the popular gateway town of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was named for a notorious figure named Radford Gatlin. However, it is the Ogles, descendants of the first settlers, who have embodied Gatlinburg history and contributed to its phenomenal tourist development. Today there are over 10,000 who rightfully claim kin to the Ogles.

During a hunting trek around 1803, William “Billy” Ogle discovered an isolated place near the foot of Mount LeConte that would come to be known as White Oak Flats. He was so impressed that he laid claim to the property, hewed logs for a cabin, then returned to his home in South Carolina and informed his family that as soon as they could grow and harvest a crop, they were all moving to what he described as the land of paradise. Unfortunately, Ogle contracted malaria and died while preparing for the move. 

His undaunted widow, Martha Jane, brought her five sons and two daughters, and her brother and his family to White Oaks Flats in 1807. They found the cached logs where Billy had left them, built a cabin, and settled the land around it. Martha Jane is unquestionably the maternal ancestor of most of the sons and daughters of the pioneer families who built the tourist mecca, Gatlinburg, after the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established. 

A great-grandson, Noah Ogle, opened a general store in 1870. Over a decade earlier, an outsider, Radford Gatlin, had moved to the community and opened a mercantile business. Despite a growing list of enemies, somehow Gatlin managed to have the first post office located in his store. Perhaps, because Gatlin owned the building, the name chosen for the post office was Gatlinburg. 

After several years of feuding with the locals, particularly the Ogle family, Gatlin, a secessionist, either left on his own accord, or more likely was run out of town shortly after the Civil War started. The Gatlinburg post office moved to Noah Ogle’s store after he opened for business. Operated by five succeeding generations over the next century, Ogle’s Store was a mainstay of Gatlinburg. 

When roving national columnist Ernie Pyle visited Gatlinburg in 1940, he wrote of the Ogle family store: “As the business grew, they kept building on more additions. The store rambles and juts around all over the place. It has separate grocery, shoes, hardware, women’s wear departments. You can buy things you can’t even get in Knoxville—provided Charlie or his son Earl, can locate them. They say you can get anything here from a hairpin to a threshing machine. So, I put them to the test. I asked if they had G. Washington’s Coffee, which is the powdered kind you just stir into a cup of water. No grocery store in ten has it, we’ve found. But Ogles came through. They had it alright.”    

‘Part of the legacy’

Following in the footsteps of her indomitable ancestor, Martha Jane Ogle, Hattie Maples became one of the movers and shakers of Gatlinburg’s emerging tourist industry.

At the age of 14, Hattie went to work in her father Isaac’s general store. Local hunters would dry the skins of the animals they killed and bring them to the store to trade. She became proficient at assessing the value of these skins and was put in charge of that part of the business. When they had accumulated a wagon full of skins, they would head to Knoxville to sell them. Only an hour’s drive by car these days, Knoxville was a two-day trip by wagon.

While working in her father’s store, Hattie fell in love with the son of a competing merchant. This young gentleman was Charles A. Ogle, whom she married in 1917. (She was widowed in 1945 at age 47, and subsequently married Ira McGiffin.) After her four children started school, Hattie still had a desire to be a part of the business world. In 1932, the young entrepreneur opened her first craft shop, Bearskin Craft Shop. She sold strictly handcrafts from the local area or nearby regions. Her favorite items were locally made baskets and hand-woven goods. She employed around 25 local crafters to supply her with inventory.

Soon after she entered the Gatlinburg business world with her craft shop, more visitors started discovering the relaxing mountain town. Realizing they needed a place to stay, she opened and operated a tourist home. She next added two motels and an RV park to her growing business empire. She worked long hours and often made sacrifices for the good of the business. In order to make payments on her first investment, as she was building the motel, she would rent her apartment for $35 a night and sleep on a cot in her laundry room. When she felt it was time to retire from the business world, she began leasing the properties she had acquired throughout her career. 

Hattie shared her business talents and visions for the Gatlinburg area with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She gradually turned over the business responsibilities to them, but continued to advise and guide the family. Before she died at age 104, in 2002, Hattie stated, “The grandchildren are a part of the legacy I am leaving.”

Feeding thousands

Known by his nickname, Coot, Luther Ogle—from a different branch of the Ogle clan—left home when he was 12 and began making his own way. For 18 months, he earned a dollar a day working on telephone lines which were coming into the area. Dropping out of school, Coot began working for the CCC when he was 16. In 1934 he went to work at the Mountain View Hotel for eight cents an hour. Determined to be successful, Coot saved practically every penny he earned. 

In 1942, together with his brother, Coot purchased a business named the Beer Barn. He sold the Beer Barn in 1945 and purchased a restaurant on the Parkway named A Sip and A Bite, later known as Ogle’s Café.

Following a disastrous flood in 1950, he purchased the Twin Island Motel. While on a vacation with his wife, Stella, in the western United States, he observed the popularity of buffet-style eateries. When he returned to Gatlinburg, he converted Ogle’s Café into Ogle’s Buffett Restaurant, the first buffet-style restaurant in Gatlinburg. Later, he purchased the Crossroads Motel and built Ogle’s Water Park in Pigeon Forge.

Coot Ogle also never forgot his roots. He often said, “The Lord has been good to me and I try to give something back. I gave my first $10,000 to a church. I always said I would, and I did.” He never allowed his business to keep him from taking his family to church.

While dining at a restaurant in Haiti, Coot was approached by a man whose wife was sick; he had no money and no hope. The man was a minister, and he was preaching in a small shack.

Moved to tears, Coot financed the preacher’s ministry, providing him a better building to preach in as well as helping with other needs. Coot went on to launch more than 20 churches, seven medical clinics, two orphanages, and provided food to 8,500 hungry people a day. His work took him away to far-reaching parts of the globe, including India and the Soviet Union, where he assisted missionaries who provided Bibles for churches.

Another descendant of Billy and Martha Jane Ogle, Dr. John W. Ogle, had established a medical practice near Sevierville by the time he was 21. A few years later he moved to Pigeon Forge and built an office near his home.  

The life of a country doctor before and during the early 1920s was often daunting. Dr. Ogle experienced many hardships while making house calls day and night. In the winter, he would sometimes return home frozen to his saddle by sleet and snow. His wife, Blanche, would have to pry his legs from the leather after pouring heated water on them to melt the ice.

In 1925, he and Blanche purchased a 128-acre farm located a few miles south of Sevierville, planted five small oaks in the front yard, and named the place Five Oaks Farm. He moved his office to a bank building in Sevierville. Later, Dr. Ogle built his office next to his home, where he continued to practice for the rest of his life.

At Five Oaks Farm, he raised peas and other crops, as well as livestock, including horses, cattle, and sheep. His pride and joy were his Tennessee Walking Horses. Dr. Ogle traveled the United States entering his horses in shows.

After the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established, thousands of visitors, passing by on their way to the Smokies, marveled at dozens of Dr. Ogle’s beautiful Tennessee Walking horses grazing in the pastures all the way up to the west fork of the Little Pigeon River. 

The Ogles loved to entertain guests at the family home, and it has been said that the home place at Five Oaks Farm never considered anyone a stranger.  

Two branches of the gigantic Ogle clan united in 1946, when John D. Ogle, a son of Dr. John W. Ogle, married one of Hattie Ogle McGiffin’s daughters, Antoinette, albeit they were very distant cousins. 

Several generations later, the Five Oaks Farm property remains in the Ogle family. There is no longer any active farming or breeding of Tennessee Walking Horses on the property. However, the tradition of hospitality continues, and it remains a place where strangers are welcome. 

A real estate empire 

In the early 1950s, John D., and his wife, Antoinette, acquired Five Oaks Farm, and in 1956 established a Phillips 66 distribution operation. In 1968, John D. died at age 48, and his widow took over the business until their oldest son, Jim, left college to help in the mid-1970s. Another son, Dave, joined the family business after graduating from college. Having graduated with a degree in real estate and receiving a broker’s license while in college, Dave convinced his other family members to sell the oil franchise that was taking so much of their time so they concentrate on real estate. 

Starting with the expansion of Baskins Square Mall in Gatlinburg, the Ogle brothers embarked on a viable commercial real-estate empire. In the ensuing years, the family established Five Oaks Development Group, Five Oaks/Ogle, a general contracting firm, AJO Enterprises, and Oaktenn Hotel Group. Their sister, Gloria Falk, served as the primary bookkeeper and financial officer until multiple sclerosis prohibited her from working. She was replaced by her younger sister, Sara Valentine. 

With a tenant operator, they converted the old farmhouse into an upscale restaurant called Five Oaks Inn and began building lodging in Sevierville and Gatlinburg, starting with the Oak Tree Lodge. Numerous other hotels have followed including Bearskin Lodge, The Appy Lodge Gatlinburg, with an Ogle cousin, and Lodge at Five Oaks in Sevierville, as well as Crockett’s Breakfast Camp in Gatlinburg. In all of these properties, the Ogle family has focused on honoring their family legacy and reflecting on their deeply rooted ancestry with museum-quality exhibits on display in several of their businesses. 

The large-scale commercialization of Five Oaks Farm started in the early 1990s with Tanger Outlets at Five Oaks, which was originally Five Oaks Outlets. They commissioned their architect to design a shopping space that reflected the aura of the antebellum farmhouse that still graces the property today. The first phase was completed in 1992 and covered 55,000 square feet. After building the first three phases, the Ogles leased the property to Tanger Factory Outlets Inc. Today the complex covers ten times the original space, and is the leading retail operation in Sevier County.  

Two members of the ninth generation of the Ogle family, Dave’s two sons, Jake and Taylor, joined the family business after graduating college. Wanting to create a unique, authentic and experimental retail concept, they recently opened their newest business venture, Ogle Brothers General Store, near some of their other businesses that include Five Oaks Farm Kitchen and the Lodge at Five Oaks, which was originally built as a Fairfield Inn & Suites then renovated and re-themed in 2018. Shortly after that they developed the 17,000 square foot Five Oaks Farm Kitchen, a home-themed place keeping the tradition of Dr. John and Blanche Ogle by welcoming friends and neighbors for southern cooking and hospitality. 

Dave Ogle is quick to point out his branch of the Ogle family is only one among thousands descended from the trail-blazing Martha Jane who have become successful, contributing citizens of Gatlinburg and communities throughout the country. How does he feel about the contributions he and his family have made?

“The thing that is heart-warming about what we have done is that people from all age groups and economic backgrounds from all across our nation can come and bring their families here, can visit us and make memories that will last a lifetime.”