GATLINBURG – The City's Bicentennial Celebration continues with a historic memorial sign dedication at the White Oak Flats Cemetery at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, June 20.

The public observance to unveil a commemorative sign for the historic site is sponsored by Gatlinburg's Bicentennial Committee. Included in the program, interpreters in period attire will tell stories of people now buried in White Oak Flats Cemetery, including merchants E.E. and Noah Ogle, furniture crafter E.L. Reagan, and renowned Gatlinburg mountain man Wiley Oakley.

Originally called the White Oak Flats settlement due to the abundant white oak trees in the valley, Gatlinburg was settled by English, Scotch, Irish, and Scotch-Irish immigrants in the early 1800s, with the cemetery dating to about 1830.

The serene, tree lined graveyard nestled above the bustling Parkway in downtown Gatlinburg contains the gravesites of many of Gatlinburg's earliest settlers and prominent citizens, with names including Ogle, Huskey, McCarter, Maples, Reagan and Whaley particularly obvious because their families were the first to settle the valley of the Little Pigeon River and its tributaries.

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