Gatlinburg Roots

08/31/2026

The Best Mother — Lillian Reagan Ogle

These are excerpts from an interview with Doris Marr.

Doris Marr had the best mother a girl could ask for. Lillian Reagan Ogle let her go outside and play all day, free to do anything she wanted.

Across the street from their house, a field had been dug up for planting corn — long rows like trenches, with mounds of dirt piled on either side, running almost the whole way across the field. To a child's eye, it looked just like the battlefields she'd seen at the movies. Every Saturday, before the picture started, the theater ran newsreels showing soldiers down in trenches, fighting and shooting.

So the cornfield became a battlefield of its own. Doris and her friends would climb down into those rows and gather up ammunition — big clumps of dry dirt that they hurled at each other like bombs. The dirt was so brittle it usually broke apart before it landed, which meant nobody ever really got hurt, and nobody ever wanted to stop.

They threw dirt all day long.

By the time Doris made it home, she'd be covered head to toe. And that's the part of the story that stayed with her longest — not the battle, but what waited for her afterward.

Her mother never said a word about it. She just took her clothes off, washed her clothes, and put her in the bathtub — never an unkind word.

Doris had a neighbor friend whose mother fussed at her constantly for getting dirty, but her own mother never did.

Looking back on it now, Doris says it made her realize just how wonderful a mother she'd had.

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin’.

08/31/2026

Lucinda Ogle on Her Grandfather’s Porch

Sitting on the front porch of the Noah “Bud” Ogle cabin along Cherokee Orchard Road, Lucinda Ogle wasn’t just talking about an old homeplace.

She was talking about her grandfather.

Lucinda was the daughter of Wiley Oakley and Rebecca Ann Ogle Oakley. Rebecca was the daughter of Noah “Bud” Ogle, whose homestead still stands today just outside Gatlinburg.

Looking around the place where her grandfather had lived and worked, Lucinda remembered the skill that went into nearly everything he made.

“My grandfather made the locks and the hinges,” she recalled. “He was an artist, really.”

To Lucinda, that was the point.

A man could be an artist with wood, iron, tools, furniture, beds, wagon parts, feeding troughs, and whatever else had to be made. Bud worked with what he had around him. He turned wooden pieces on a homemade lathe. He whittled troughs for the livestock. He made wooden hinges by hand.

“Everything was made with an artist’s hand.”

And the memories were still tied to the place itself.

Lucinda said that every time she came back, she had to walk up to the barns and see those old handmade pieces again.

Then she tried the cabin door.

She wanted to hear whether the old hinge still squeaked.

Somebody had greased it.

“It didn’t squeak,” she said.

But the one up at the barn still did.

For Lucinda, the cabin and barns weren’t simply preserved buildings.

They were her grandfather’s hands still at work.

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through rare images, forgotten family stories, voices from the mountains, and alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin’.

08/29/2026

When the Forest Glowed

By the late 1800s, families living in the Smokies were still walking mountain paths after dark without the electric light we take for granted today. And on certain damp nights, they could encounter something genuinely strange — dead wood glowing green in the darkness.

It was called foxfire.

The glow wasn't flame, and the wood wasn't burning. Certain fungi living inside decaying logs, stumps, and roots can produce their own light through bioluminescence. In complete darkness, that faint green glow can become visible to the human eye.

The science explains what caused it.

The mountain stories tell us what it was like to see it.

Foxfire became part of folklore across the Southern mountains, where stories were passed from one generation to another about strange glowing wood discovered along trails, creek bottoms, and deep in the forest.

Imagine seeing it before you knew the explanation.

No electric lights around you. No flashlight in your hand. Just darkness beneath the trees — and an old piece of timber glowing green on the forest floor.

Today we know there was a fungus behind the light.

But for the people who encountered foxfire generations ago, it was simply another strange thing these mountains could do after the sun went down.

Did your parents or grandparents ever tell you about seeing foxfire in the mountains?

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project sharing rare images, forgotten family stories, and voices from the mountains, preserving Gatlinburg history and the everyday life and memory of earlier generations.

Keep on Rootin'.

08/28/2026

Wiley Oakley Day — Gatlinburg
Official Day: Saturday, September 12, 2026
Events Begin Friday, September 11

This year marks the very first Wiley Oakley Day in Gatlinburg.

Wiley Oakley was born September 12, 1885, and became one of the Smokies’ best-known mountain guides, storytellers, writers, and naturalists. Known to many as the “Roamin’ Man of the Mountains,” Wiley spent his life in these hills, sharing their stories and helping generations of visitors and locals remember what made this place special.

The official Wiley Oakley Day is Saturday, September 12 — his birthday — but the celebration begins Friday with a proclamation, music, and Wiley tales.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

Wiley Oakley Day Proclamation
Gatlinburg City Hall
Time TBD

7:00 to 8:00+ PM
Tunes & Wiley Tales
Luke Ellis & Lew Bolton
Roamin’ Man Pizza, Pigeon Forge

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 — WILEY OAKLEY DAY

10:15 AM
Proclamation Excerpts & Plaque Recognition
Mynatt Park

11:30 AM
Wiley Tales
Noah “Bud” Ogle Cabin & Barn

It is a fitting tribute that Gatlinburg’s first official Wiley Oakley Day falls on the very date he was born, bringing his name, his stories, and his mountain legacy back to the people and places that knew him best.

— Gatlinburg Roots —
Follow the Legacy of the Families Who Built These Mountains.

08/27/2026

Remembering Dolly Parton at her statue in Sevierville. A place to gather, remember, and celebrate the life of a hometown girl who touched the world.

08/27/2026

Wildflowers Have Medicinal Uses — Unlocking the Old Mountain Wisdom of Herbs and Healing

What we call wildflowers today were often something more to the families who lived in these mountains. Many were wild herbs — gathered, brewed, sold, and used as medicine long before modern drugstores became part of everyday life.

Families knew which roots could be dug, which leaves could be steeped into tea, and which plants had been used for generations as home remedies. That knowledge was often learned at home and passed from one generation to the next.

Ginseng was probably the best-known example. Lucinda Ogle remembered that it “made the mountaineer money too.” Mountain families gathered it not only for its traditional medicinal reputation, but because dried ginseng root could also be sold for cash. For some families, that made it both medicine and income.

Other plants had their place too.

Ground ivy was used in old home remedies and teas. Lucinda talks about the little plant spreading all over the ground and mentions one of the old names associated with it — what appears to be “Jill-over-the-ground.” Like many old mountain plants, it carried different names depending on who was doing the telling.

Yellowroot was gathered and remembered as a medicinal plant. Different families had different uses, different names, and different ways of preparing what grew around them.

People living in the Smokies had an intimate working knowledge of the plants around them. They knew what could be eaten, what could be sold, what might soothe a complaint, and what had been handed down from their parents and grandparents.

That may be the most interesting part of all.

The wildflowers still come back every year.

But much of the knowledge that once came with them did not.

— Gatlinburg Roots —
Follow the Legacy of the Families Who Built These Mountains.

08/26/2026

The world is mourning Dolly Parton.

Today, much of it came looking for her in Sevierville.

She died Tuesday in Nashville, at 80, after a brief battle with cancer — a year after losing Carl Dean, her husband of nearly six decades. She grew up one of twelve children in a one-room cabin in Sevier County, and turned that childhood into songs the world never let go of: "Coat of Many Colors," "Jolene," "I Will Always Love You." She built Dollywood into one of Tennessee's biggest destinations. She gave away hundreds of millions of books to children through her Imagination Library. And through all of it, she never stopped calling Sevier County home.

The reach of what happened next is hard to overstate. Tributes poured in from across industries, genres, and generations — Reba McEntire, Mick Jagger, Dionne Warwick, Pink, Donatella Versace. Paul McCartney called her songwriting and philanthropy unrivaled. Celine Dion said the world would be missing one of its most joyful voices. President Trump ordered flags lowered for a week.

And an ocean away, a 300-year-old military tradition paused to honor her. The morning after her death was announced, the Band of the Coldstream Guards played "9 to 5" during Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace. King Charles and Queen Camilla posted their own words alongside it, closing with a line borrowed straight from her: we will always love you.

That reach wasn't only public figures. It was personal too — texts landing overnight from family across the ocean in the Netherlands, people who never met her, mourning a woman who felt like theirs anyway.

But this morning, the cameras came here.

Reuters. The Associated Press. NewsNation. Regional crews. International media. They gathered on the lawn of the Sevier County Courthouse, broadcasting the story of Dolly Parton back out to the world from the place where her story began.

And just a few feet away sat Dolly.

Not on a stage. Not beneath the lights of Hollywood or Nashville. But in bronze, holding her guitar, on the courthouse lawn in her hometown — while around her, the flowers kept growing. Bouquets. Balloons. Handwritten notes. Quiet messages from people who simply needed somewhere to say goodbye.

That may be the clearest measure of what Dolly Parton became. Buckingham Palace played her music. Newsrooms on four continents said her name. And when the world wanted to tell the story of where she came from, the cameras pointed back toward Sevierville — to a girl who went out and became Dolly Parton, and never stopped being from here.

Yesterday, the world lost Dolly.

Today, the world came to Sevierville to remember where she began.

— Gatlinburg Roots — Follow the Legacy of the Families Who Built These Mountains.

08/26/2026

In the early 1900s, going to school was a lot different from walking into a classroom today.

There were no smartboards glowing on the wall, no computers waiting on a desk, and no school bus rolling up to the driveway.

For many mountain kids, the school day began with a walk.

Sometimes a long one.

They came down narrow roads, crossed creeks, followed paths through the woods, and arrived carrying whatever books they had along with their dinner packed from home.

Inside, the classroom was simple.

A blackboard stood at the front. Wooden desks filled the room. The teacher might have several ages sitting together, which meant while the youngest students were learning their letters, an older student across the room could be working arithmetic or reading aloud.

Lessons were often learned by repetition.

Letters were written, erased, and written again.

Words were sounded out until they finally made sense.

Arithmetic problems went onto the board.

Spelling words were recited aloud.

And if you didn't know the answer when the teacher called your name, there wasn't much hiding in a small classroom.

Everybody heard it.

But school wasn't only what happened at the desk.

Recess meant getting outside. Dinner meant opening whatever had been packed that morning. Brothers, sisters, cousins, and neighbors often shared the same classroom, and the stories carried home from school traveled through entire families.

There were disagreements.

There was laughter.

There was probably more than one kid staring out the window when he was supposed to be paying attention.

And somewhere along the way, a teacher stood at the front of that room and tried one more time to explain the letter, the word, or the problem that just wouldn't stick.

Then one day it did.

That was school in these mountains.

Not fancy.

Not easy.

But important.

Because those little classrooms helped teach generations of mountain families how to read, write, count, and eventually step into a world that was changing faster than anyone in those rooms could have imagined.

The desks are mostly gone now.

The blackboards have disappeared.

But somewhere in an old photograph, you can still see them sitting there — looking straight at the camera, waiting for the lesson to begin.

What do you remember about your first classroom or your first schoolteacher?

— Gatlinburg Roots —

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project sharing rare images, forgotten family stories, and voices from the mountains, preserving Gatlinburg history and the everyday life and memory of earlier generations. If you have old photos, family stories, or memories connected to these hills, send us a message. Your story could be featured in a future post.

Keep on Rootin'.

08/25/2026

08/25/2026

Sometime in the early 1980s, a camera caught Lucinda Oakley Ogle talking about clouds.

She came by it honestly. Her father was Wiley Oakley — folks called him the Roaming Man of the Mountains, known all over these hills for his storytelling and for knowing this place better than anybody. Lucinda carried that same gift. She had a way of taking something as ordinary as looking up at the sky and turning it into something worth stopping for.

She talked about lying in bed as a girl, looking out the window at the sky and the clouds. "Lie on your back," she said, "and there'll come an angel with wings. Or there'll come a big old gruff-looking something across."

That second shape, the gruff-looking one, meant a little storm was coming, she said.

But that wasn't what she wanted to talk about most. It was what came after.

"The next thing, after that storm goes by, it's so pretty," she said. "Washes everything clean. And it's a beautiful world to live in. Especially this world."

She didn't think that kind of beauty was rare or hard to find. She'd found it plenty of other places too, she said, and figured that had less to do with where you were standing than what you carried into it.

"I think it's your attitude a lot of times," she said. Then she laughed a little at herself. "I almost preach, couldn't I."

That was Lucinda. Gone now, but you can still hear her teaching, all these years later, without ever meaning to.

LUCINDA OGLE SERIES — Follow along for more of her own words.

This story is part of an ongoing series featuring Lucinda Oakley Ogle, filmed on the porch of her grandparents' cabin — now known as the Ogle Cabin, along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. Follow along as we share more of her own words, in her own voice, from that same porch.

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project sharing rare images, forgotten family stories, and voices from the mountains, preserving Gatlinburg history and the everyday life and memory of earlier generations.

If you have old photos, family stories, or memories connected to these mountains, send us a message. Your story could be featured in a future post.