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.
WHALEYS OWN PLENTY
Whaley—The Whaleys too have been here a long time. Steve Whaley is the head man of the family. One son manages the hotel. Another son manages the tourist court. There is also a filling station in the family, and a saddle-horse concession, and they rent out nearly half a block of business buildings.
I was talking to one of the Whaley boys of my pleasure in seeing the rich harvestings from the tourist crop kept in local hands.
“Yes,” he said, “and I think we deserve it. We’ve always been poor and had to scratch. It wasn’t many years ago that I was hoeing corn right where the hotel stands now. We always had enough to eat, like most farmers do, but we never had any money to get any of the things we wanted. I think it’s right that we have some of it now.”