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.