Smokies national park plans major road projects

The hills will be alive with the sound of road graders and asphalt trucks next spring and summer in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The country’s most-visited national park is planning more than $44 million in major improvements to 56 miles of park roads, a campground and a popular trailhead parking area.
The repaving projects include the road to the Smokies’ highest peak at 6,643-foot Clingmans Dome and the meandering 11-mile loop around scenic Cades Cove.
Funding comes from a combination of new economic stimulus money and previously authorized Federal Lands Highway Program support.
“When the projects are finished our road system will be in the best shape it has been in for decades and our visitors will find their travel safer as well as more pleasurable,’’ Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said in a statement Monday.
The 520,000-acre park, which straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina state line, attracts more than 9 million visitors a year.
To minimize the impact on traffic, Ditmanson said, “We have worked very hard to minimize this inconvenience through scheduling as much work as possible between February and Memorial Day.’’
The Clingmans Dome road will be closed from Feb. 15 to May 28, then intermittently opened until June 18.
The Cades Cove road will be closed from March 1 to May 21, although its campground, picnic area, store and horse stables will remain accessible.
The one-way Roaring Fork motor trail near Gatlinburg will be closed from Feb. 1 to May 28, while the two-way portion of the connected Cherokee Orchard Road will be managed as a single lane during that time.
A major expansion of the 20-car parking lot and viewing area at the Sinks swimming area and Meigs Creek trailhead has been scheduled between November and late May.
Other work is planned next spring and summer on the Foothills Parkway in Blount County and on Newfound Gap Road between Gatlinburg and Cherokee, N.C.