Gatlinburg is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee, United States. It is located 39 miles (63 km) southeast of Knoxville and had a population of 3,944 at the 2010 Census and a U.S. Census population of 3,577 in 2020. It is a popular trip resort, as it rests upon the link up of Great Smoky Mountains National Park along U.S. Route 441, which connects to Cherokee, North Carolina, on the southeast side of the national park. Prior to incorporation, the town was known as White Oak Flats, or just simply White Oak.

For centuries, Cherokee hunters, as without difficulty as extra Native American hunters back them, used a footpath known as Indian Gap Trail to entry the abundant game in the forests and coves of the Smokies. This trail linked the Great Indian Warpath afterward Rutherford Indian Trace, following the West Fork of the Little Pigeon River from modern-day Sevierville through modern-day Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and the Sugarlands, crossing the crest of the Smokies along the slopes of Mount Collins, and descending into North Carolina along the banks of the Oconaluftee River. US-441 largely follows this similar route today, although it crests at Newfound Gap rather than Indian Gap.

Although various 18th-century European and early American hunters and fur trappers probably traversed or camped in the flats where Gatlinburg is now situated, it was Edgefield, South Carolina, native William Ogle (1751–1803) who first granted to permanently come to an agreement in the area. With the back of the Cherokee, Ogle cut, hewed, and notched logs in the flats, planning to erect a cabin the bearing in mind year. He returned home to Edgefield to read his relations and go to one fixed crop for supplies. However, shortly after his dawn in Edgefield, a malaria epidemic swept the low country, and Ogle succumbed to the disorder in 1803.

His widow, Martha Huskey Ogle (1756–1827), moved the family to Virginia, where she had relatives. Sometime roughly speaking 1806, Martha Huskey Ogle made the journey higher than Indian Gap Trail to what is now Gatlinburg taking into consideration her brother, Peter Huskey, her daughter, Rebecca, and her daughter’s husband, James McCarter. William Ogle’s notched logs awaited them, and they erected a cabin near the confluence of Baskins Creek and the West Fork of the Little Pigeon hurriedly after their arrival. The cabin nevertheless stands today close the heart of Gatlinburg. James and Rebecca McCarter arranged in the Cartertown district of Gatlinburg.