Gatlinburg and the Great Smokies

by Ernie Pyle

OGLES ARE OLDEST

Ogle—They, I think, are probably the oldest. An Ogle started the first store here, back before the Civil War. The Ogles have ways been the merchants of the Smokies.

Charlie Ogle is the head Ogle today, and he runs the general store that is one of the sights of Gatlinburg.

As business grew they kept building on more additions. The store rambles and juts around all over the place. It has separate grocery, shoe, hardware, women’s-wear departments.

You can buy things here you can’t get even 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” coffee, which is the powdered kind you just stir into a cup of hot water. That Girl carries it so she can have her morning coffee in hotel rooms. Not one grocery in ten has it, we’ve found.

But Ogle’s came through. They had it all right.