John H. Reagan

When Reagan was born in 1818, this was not yet Gatlinburg. It was White Oak Flats, a community settled around 1806 by the Richard Reagan and Martha Ogle families, long before the resort town. The name Gatlinburg arrived in 1856, when the post office opened in Radford Gatlin's store, and the town was not incorporated until 1945. Reagan left for Texas at the age of twenty, in 1838, and spent the rest of his public life there, in Congress, in the Confederate cabinet and on the state's Railroad Commission.

What the plaque says

John H. Reagan Was born near this spot Oct. 8, 1818. Moving to Texas in 1838, he represented that state in Congress in 1857. In 1861 he resigned to become Postmaster General of the Confederacy, an office which he held during the lifetime of that republic. He was also for a time acting Secretary of the Confederate Treasury. he died in Texas, March 6, 1905.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Newfound Gap — 8.6 mi
  The lowest drivable pass through the Smokies, at 5,046 feet on the Tennessee and North Carolina line, where Roosevelt dedicated the park in 1940 and Kuwohi's Cherokee name was restored in 2024.
• Cades Cove — 17 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 28 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Blount Mansion — 28 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.

More markers nearby

• Pigeon Forge — 4.7 mi
• Wear's Fort — 7.5 mi
• New Salem Baptist Church — 10 mi
• Harrisburg Covered Bridge — 10 mi