Smokies Blog

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center, and the City of Gatlinburg have announced the "Music of the Mountains" program on Friday and Saturday, April 9 and 10. 

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Source: National Park Service

The National Park Service (NPS) proposes to rehabilitate 14.5 miles of Newfound Gap Road on the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (U.S. 441) and to reconstruct many of its stone masonry guardwalls. The work area runs from Park’s Gatlinburg, Tenn. Entrance and the North Carolina state line at Newfound Gap. Work is scheduled to begin in November 2010 and be completed in phases over about six years. The NPS is soliciting public comments in response to an Environmental Assessment (EA) which evaluates the potential resource and other impacts of that proposed action.

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Source: National Park Service

Great Smoky Mountains Superintendent Dale Ditmanson has announced that the popular Cades Cove Loop is expected to reopen Saturday, April 24, about a month earlier than had been projected.

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Source: National Park Service

We expect to finish scraping down the remaining loose rock on the face of
last Thursday’s rockslide by mid-day today.  Then it will take several
hours to dismantle the crane used to that work and get it out of the Park.
(attached is the180′ tall crane working during the snow squalls Monday
morning).

The final step will be to re-pave the stretch of pavement that has been
damaged by the heavy, steel tracked equipment.

We expect to re-open that end of Little River Road by later this evening.

This just in from the National Park Service:

A new rockslide has blocked the western end of Little River Road within Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  The slide is about 2 miles west of the Metcalf Bottoms, so an 8 mile-long portion of the Little River Road is currently closed between Metcalf Bottoms Picninc Area and the Townsend Junction.

Traffic that would normally transit that section is being diverted out of the Park unto US 321 in Townsend then north on US 321 to the Lyon Springs Road in Wears Valley, where motorists can re-enter the Park on the Wear Cove Road to Metcalf Bottoms and continue east on Little River to Newfound Gap Road and on to either Gatlinburg or Cherokee. Due to bridge weight limits, no large motorhomes or buses can use that alternate route.  These larger vehicles must continue on US 321 into Pigeon Forge.

Park crews are enroute to get a good look at the new slide.  No estimated time of repairs is available.