Everyone who has been to Hawaii knows about “The Big Five.” How these five old families control most everything in Hawaii. It is one of the tightest, and also in my opinion one of the best monopolies in the world.

Well, Gatlinburg is just like Hawaii in that respect. There are five leading families here. Four of these families hold the reins. The fifth, although old and numerous and doing all right, could not be considered a member of the “control.”

In Gatlinburg it could be called “The Big Four.” Let me tell you about these families.

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.

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.”

THE MAPLES FAMILY

Maples—There are two brothers of the older Maples generation. One is Squire I. L. Maples, who once owned a store (I don’t know how the Ogles allowed that) and was once postmaster. The other brother is David Crockett Maples. They are direct descendants of the famous Davy Crockett, who died a hero in the Texas Alamo.

Davy Crockett Maples was a rural mail carrier. He carried the mail up into the higher Smokies, to Sugarlands, and the little way-back settlements.

He is retired now. He hasn’t much to do with his time. So he uses it up milking a cow. He has one cow, and they say she gives about a pint of milk. But neither hail nor sleet nor dark of night stays Davy Crockett on his daily rounds to milk that beloved cow.

Rel Maple is Davy Crockett’s son. He owns the Gatlinburg Inn, the newest of the town’s hotels. He also owns the Log Cabin Cafe, and a gift shop, and there is a tourist court in the family. The Maples are doing real well.

ANDY HUFF

Huff—Andy Huff is Gatlinburg’s most prominent man. He is the civic leader. He starts things, and finishes them. What he suggests, the other three usually do.

Andy Huff came to Gatlinburg 39 years ago from Greene County, in Tennessee. He was a lumber man. He owned big saw-mills and cut timber.

In the old days there wasn’t any place around here for a stranger to stay, so Andy Huff put up wayfarers at his house. But the lumber men who stayed with the Huffs liked it so well they’d bring friends. That got to the point where they couldn’t all get in the Huff house.

So in 1916 Andy Huff built a frame hotel, which looked like a house, just to accommodate the lumber men. He has been in the hotel business ever since.

The old-time visitors to Gatlinburg always stayed with Andy Huff at his Mountain View Hotel. But it is no longer an amateur affair. It is a huge place, sitting on a hillside, and they have served as many as 900 meals in a day there.

These four families are numerous with children, as mountain families usually are. As each family’s wealth grows, it is invested in some new business for one of the children.

Mountain children do go away, but somehow they always come back. The Huffs, the Ogles, the Whaleys, the Maples—each one has a generation in its 20s and 30s, and they are all in the family business up to their necks.

Almost without exception, they carry in their hearts the mountain man’s love of the land. And as long as that lasts, the “Big Four” of Gatlinburg will endure.