Gruetli-Laager ( GROOT-lee LAH-gər) is a city in Grundy County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 1,813 at the 2010 census. As its post implies, Gruetli-Laager consists of two communities— Gruetli and Laager— incorporated as a single city.

Gruetli was founded by German-speaking Swiss immigrants in 1869. The town was allowance of a greater initiative— conducted by an meting out known as the Tennessee Kolonisation Gesellschaft— to encourage Swiss colonies atop the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Gruetli was probably named after a commune in the Swiss canton of Glarus. Peter Staub, a devotee of Knoxville’s affluent Swiss community, helped purchase the initial tract of house for Gruetli. The estate was advertised in Switzerland, where the opportunity for a new start appealed to many families struggling with hard economic conditions in Europe.

Although on top of 100 Swiss families moved to the Gruetli Place in the 1870s, many were disappointed by the land’s destitute quality and relative isolation, and as a result relocated to clear cities. Nevertheless, by 1880, Grundy County had the largest Swiss population of any county in Tennessee. Prominent before settlers at Gruetli included Christian Marugg, who operated an inn along the stagecoach road together with Chattanooga and McMinnville, and Melchior Thoni, Jr. (1849–1926), a woodcarver whose conduct yourself was displayed in the old-fashioned Governor’s Mansion and the Christ Church in Nashville.

Throughout the in advance 1900s, railroads were constructed in the hills east of Gruetli to accommodate various coal mining operations in the area. Laager was acknowledged as a railroad stopover (initially known as “Henley’s Switch”) in 1918. Gruetli and Laager combination and incorporated in 1980.