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Back of the cabin overlookin the river
The restaurant
Sign in the parking lot
Molasses FurnaceThere Are No Gatlins Living in Gatlinburg
First there were the mountains, the forest, and the wildlife. Then came the Cherokee Indians who made this area their hunting grounds. The first white pioneers, named Oglesby, crossed over the mountains from South Carolina. Their name was later shortened to Ogle - still a very prominent name in Sevier County to this day. By 1832 the first church was built along the banks of the Little Pigeon River and it was called White Oaks Baptist Church. As the community grew it became known as White Oak Flats.
Other people moved into White Oak Flats, including Radford Gatlin, who built a mercantile store. By 1855 the U.S. Post Office Department felt it was time to open a branch in White Oak Flats and sought permission to place a post office in the corner of Gatlin's Store. He consented on the provision that the post office be named "Gatlinburg," so the unincorporated community which had been known as White Oak Flats took on a new name.
Confederate sentiments were running high in many parts of the south during the mid-19th century, leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. Most of the fiercely independent southern Appalachian mountain folk didn't identify with the plantation economy of the deep south. In fact, when the Civil War finally did break out, two out of three young men from Sevier County who fought in the war served with the Union forces, and the other third fought for the south.
Radford Gatlin was an outspoken advocat of succession and the Confederacy. Most Confederate sympathizers lived on the far end of the county; hardly any were here in the mountains. So it was that on a fateful night in 1860, Radford was dragged from his home by a group of masked men and beaten soundly. It is widely believed that the masked raiders were of the Ogle clan. Fearing for his life Gatlin fled town, but he left his name behind. To this day people still know the town as Gatlinburg.
