The Life and Times of Bud Ogle in Gatlinburg Tennessee
William Ogle himself identified the Gatlinburg area as ripe for European settlement. He was a Delaware native who made his way down to the Carolinas where he met and married Martha Huskey. With the help of the Cherokee locals, he cut and hewed the logs to build a cabin. William returned to his family in South Carolina in 1803 with the idea of growing a season of crops before returning to the mountains. However, he died that March at the age of 48.
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Is the Noah Bud Ogle cabin still there today?
Martha didn’t let go of her husband’s dream. She took her family (they had 7 children) and her brother and went to what would become White Oak Flats and later Gatlinburg. They built the cabin – which still stands today right in downtown Gatlinburg – and they thrived. The Ogle family soon spread throughout the region. They built a powerful family name that remains among the most prominent in the community even today.
Among their descendants was Noah “Bud” Ogle, their great-grandson. Born in 1863, Bud grew up hardworking and industrious and built his family home near LeConte Creek in the upper drainage of the West Fork of the Little River in what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Bud’s farm was originally 400 acres. But well before his death in 1913, he’d divided it among his children, keeping 150 acres for his own. The land he close wasn’t exactly farm-friendly. Hard and rocky, he was mostly able to grow corn. He also had an apple orchard and grew several types of apples.
Other structures near the Noah Bud Ogle cabin
Noah Bud Ogle built most of the structures on his farm when he was a young man, in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Of those buildings, the cabin, barn and tub mill remain. The cabin is known as a saddlebag design, fairly rare in the region. Essentially, it’s two adjoined cabins that share a single fireplace in the middle section of the barn.
The four-pen barn is a design that used to be frequent in the region. However, today it’s the only one left standing in the park, as is the old tub mill. The four pens were used for livestock, such as chickens and pigs.
Life on the farm
Bud allowed his relatives, of which there were a fair few, to use his tub mill free of charge. But for others, the cost was a small portion of the meal itself. He made money shipping excess corn and apples to Knoxville while his wife Lucinda worked as a midwife.
It’s hard to imagine today what life would have been like on the Ogle farm. It seems such a hard life, but it was lived in a place that attracts millions of visitors each year. Located in what is now the Junglebrook Historic District, the farm was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
It’s clear that family was important to the Ogles. Noah’s farm came with a weaner cabin. Newly married couples could live here until they were ready to strike out on their own. I was disappointed when I realized how weaner was spelled, but it makes sense. The cabin was to allow Bud’s sons (and their new wives) time to wean themselves away from the family dynamic.
Where is the Bud Ogle farm?
You can visit the remnants of the Ogle place in the National Park today. The farm is just outside of Gatlinburg. It can be found on the way to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail on Cherokee Orchard Road.
Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is best known for offering a scenic drive through the area. There’s a parking area nearby. A hike on the nature trail offers a moderately trafficked loop that is good for most skill levels.
If you want to visit Bud himself, he is buried behind Fannie Farkles at the White Oak Flats Cemetery in the heart of Gatlinburg. Lucinda, who lived to see the formation of the National Park, is there as well. She died in 1938 at the age of 75. They had 10 children including Polly Ogle Bohanan, who died in 1988. You can see a picture of Polly with her children Verna and Carl sitting outside Arrowmont in the early 1900s here. Leonard, Madison and Rebecca Ann are all also buried in the White Oak Flats Cemetery. Many of the Ogles remain at rest at this historic site.
Have you visited the “Bud” Ogle historic site? What other historic places have you visited in the Smokies or in Tennessee? Let us know in the comments.