Too popular? National park struggles with sometimes contradictory objectives

Perhaps more than any other national park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park wrestles with goals that can clearly be contradictory: protecting and preserving the park’s natural environs and providing for public enjoyment of the park.

In 1916, the Organic Act created the National Park Service in part to “conserve the [parks’] scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and… leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” With annual visitation in the Smokies averaging nearly 13 million over the past five years, however, reconciling these lofty goals is no easy task — even in a vast park comprising more than 520,000 acres. A new parking fee, implemented in March 2023 in lieu of a prohibited Smokies entrance fee, did not deter 13.3 million visitors that year. By comparison, the second most visited national park in 2023 was Grand Canyon National Park, which attracted slightly more than 4.7 million visitors.

The admirably democratic phrase FOR THE BENEFIT AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE, inscribed on the famous Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park, is taken from the 1872 legislation that established Yellowstone as the world’s first national park; the NPS would come much later. Equally noble words headline the Rockefeller Memorial plaque at Newfound Gap in the Smokies, stating that the park exists FOR THE PERMANENT ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE. But that objective is in danger of becoming increasingly elusive in the Smokies park.

The challenge of accommodating millions of park visitors each year is even greater at certain locations in the Smokies. For example, the Cades Cove and Clingmans Dome areas each attract more visitors annually than do most of our 62 other national parks. The intense visitor pressure at these relatively small pockets in the 800-square-mile park often leads to major traffic jams and frayed tempers matching what one might find at a big sporting event or concert. Some trails too – among them Alum Cave, Chimney Tops and the Appalachian Trail from Newfound Gap to Charlies Bunion – attract legions of hikers most of the year. As a result, these paths and others take a pounding even if most hikers have no intention of having an adverse effect on them.

The impact of so many visitors in the Smokies would be great even if no one littered, picked flowers, trampled vegetation, defaced historic structures, drove recklessly, flew drones, parked in fragile places, took dogs into the backcountry, approached elk or fed bears. Alas, those activities and others defying park regulations are not uncommon, even if many visitors do seek to minimize their impact on the park’s abundant natural resources.

It’s also true that some park visitors are mostly just passing through on U.S. 441, which traverses the Smokies for more than 30 miles as Newfound Gap Road. Even so, their vehicles are among the five million or so that are now entering the park at various entrances each year, despite the fact that the heavily traveled transmountain road is often closed in winter because of snow, ice, fallen trees or high winds. The vehicle count seems likely to continue climbing in a park that has a major U.S. highway winding through it and, by law, no toll or entrance fee.

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The Smokies park has been the nation’s most visited since the 1940s, owing partly to its size, free entrance and relative proximity to much of the population of the eastern United States. It also has a unique combination of scenery, biodiversity (more than 22,000 known species and counting) and compelling human history. But visitation has exploded in recent years, surpassing 14 million in 2021. After falling off to slightly less than 13 million in 2022, visitation rose again in 2023 even with the new parking fee.

A fragile basin just inside the park boundary provides an excellent example of sometimes competing ideals in managing the park. Part of an area with numerous limestone coves, the basin is home to more than a dozen caves where bats hibernate. In years past the Park Service has temporarily prohibited all visitor access to the area – not just its caves – in an effort to slow the decline of bat populations infected with white-nose syndrome. The syndrome causes white fungal growth that damages skin tissue, causing bats to wake from hibernation and deplete stored fat that cannot be replenished during the winter months. More recently, the park undertook an extensive effort to remove debris blocking entrance to one of the caves where bats have historically hibernated.

But the basin is ecologically sensitive for other reasons. The relatively small area is home to several rare plant species, including three found nowhere else in the park: Guyandotte beauty, wall-rue and shooting star. Although no official park trails lead into the basin, it nonetheless receives a heavy amount of foot traffic particularly from early to mid-spring, when its wildflowers are especially showy. As a result, plant trampling, soil compaction, invasive species and poaching have become major issues. “Benefit and enjoyment,” meet “conserve and leave unimpaired.”

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The Great Smokies are often called a hiker’s park. And it’s true that, across the seasons, hordes of hikers take to the park’s 850 miles of established trails. The reality, however, is that GSMNP is much more of a driver’s park, with the vast majority of visitors never venturing more than a couple of hundred yards from their vehicles. With nearly 400 miles of maintained roads – paved and otherwise – less active sightseers can easily see stunning vistas at scenic overlooks as well as view wildlife at places such as the Cades Cove loop road and Oconaluftee Visitor Center. For many, that’s enough.

Unfortunately, those who do hike at least a short distance often gravitate to areas that are heavily used and sometimes abused. Exhibit A may be Laurel Falls Trail about four miles west of Sugarlands Visitor Center. The easy 1.3-mile walk to the falls has seen upwards of 75,000 hikers in a single month (July), or an average of nearly 2,500 visitors a day. Numbers such as those not only start to make the area feel something like a crowded theme park, but also have a major adverse impact on the trail and its corridor.

In response to the trail’s heavy use, the park is undertaking a management plan that will include resurfacing and widening the trail; building a new viewing platform; installing new signs at the trailhead and along the trail; constructing a wider bridge at the upper falls; expanding and improving the available designated parking spaces; and adding a shuttle service and timed-entry parking reservation system for the trailhead.

Park managers expect the trail to be closed for at least 18 months, giving the path a respite from its hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. The trail’s closure also will help disperse some visitation, though that may result in further pressure on crazily busy areas such as Cades Cove, where it can take as much as four hours during peak times to drive its scenic 11-mile loop road. Once reopened, the continuing heavy use of Laurel Falls Trail should be better managed.

Even outlying parts of the Smokies, with the possible exception of the Twentymile section in the park’s southwestern corner, have become heavily visited at times during the warmer months. Litter and out-of-bounds parking are now fairly common issues in previously quieter areas such as Big Creek. And anyone who has tried to find a parking place in order to hike Alum Cave Trail – the shortest and most popular route to majestic Mount Le Conte – has likely experienced some frustration especially during Leconte Lodge season from mid-March to late November. (Reservations are needed, typically far in advance, for overnight stays at the rustic lodge reached by a variety of park trails but not by vehicles.)

In light of the millions of visitors each year, park managers have begun to consider various options, including reservations for timed entry, to mitigate congestion at extremely popular locales. In fact, a recent pilot project with shuttles and timed entry at Laurel Falls may prove to be a model for other areas.

“While timed entry is common across the NPS, the Smokies’ size and complexity mean no single strategy will likely work for all destinations,” notes Kendra Straub, park management & program analyst. “We continue to study visitor use across the park, including Cades Cove and Clingmans Dome, to support data-driven strategies to improve visitor experience.”

For now, though, visitors can enter most any part of the park at any time unless access is barred by a temporary or seasonal road closure. Gridlock, especially on Newfound Gap Road, is often heightened by so-called bear or elk jams that sometimes result in motorists coming to a dead stop on a major U.S. highway in order to gawk at the Smokies’ largest animals – sometimes at visitors’ peril. It seems safe to say that’s an issue timed entry or other measures will not be able to fully resolve.

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