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Smoky Mountains
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The area’s first known inhabitants were prehistoric Indians, which were followed by the Archaic Period Indians, who date back as far as 10,000 years ago. The Eastern Woodland Indians made their homes in the mountains between 900 B.C. and 900 A.D., and the Indians of the Mississippian Period lived in the area until around 1600. The Cherokee—the tribe with which the Smokies are most closely associated—descended from those early civilizations. They settled mainly in Western North Carolina, using East Tennessee primarily as hunting grounds, until increasing conflicts with white settlers led to their being marched en masse to Oklahoma in the 1860s on the infamous Trail of Tears. <Read More...>
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Pigeon Forge
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| In the late 1700s, the city known today as Pigeon Forge enjoyed an early influx of settlers thanks to the land grants awarded to veterans of the Revolutionary War. But when Sevierville became the county seat in 1796, the two communities began to follow different paths. Sevierville flourished and grew, while Pigeon Forge remained a sleepy little town, until tourism began to have an impact on its growth in the mid 20th century. <Read More...> |
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Gatlinburg
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The land occupied by Gatlinburg today was likely first settled by Cherokee Indians around 500 years ago, but by the end of the 1700s, white settlers occupied much of the land. One of the town’s early pioneers, Martha Jane Huskey Ogle and her family established a home in what was then known as White Oak Flats in 1805. The name change took place in the 1850s, when a man named Radford Gatlin arrived in town, opened a general store and secured himself a postal commission, which he used to name the town in his own honor in 1856. Interestingly, Gatlin was not a beloved man in the community, and by 1859, he agreed to leave town as long as the remaining citizenry agreed to keep the Gatlinburg name. And they did. <Read More...>
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Sevierville
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The legislative act that established Sevier County in 1794 also called for a commission to select a county seat, and in 1795, a site at Forks of Little Pigeon River (present-day Sevierville) was chosen and also named in honor of the state’s first governor, John Sevier. The community was based on a 25-acre tract of land that featured a primitive courthouse and jail. Over the years, several courthouses were built in the center of downtown, and the structure that stands today is the city’s fifth, dating all the way back to 1896. <Read More...>
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