Paving starts on Newfound Gap Road in Smokies

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — With warmer continue here, a repaving plan is resuming in a Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The work will embody a 6.1-mile territory of U.S. 441, also called Newfound Gap Road. The territory being resurfaced this summer extends from a cruise area during a Chimneys to a Alum Cave Bluffs parking area, where work final summer ended.

Park officials pronounced drivers should design delays on a two-lane towering road. There will be no daytime paving work from Jun 15 to Aug. 15 and nothing in October, when a Smokies are alive by visitors to see a tumble foliage.

This summer’s work is partial of 3 phases that will eventually repave all 15 miles of a highway from a park range during Gatlinburg to Newfound Gap on a Tennessee-North Carolina border.

Smokies visits approaching to miscarry with highway fixed

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — The National Park Service expects visits to a Great Smoky Mountains National Park to rebound, now that U.S. 441 has been easy on a North Carolina side.

April visits were down 14.6 percent, compared with Apr 2012. Park officials pronounced that was off scarcely 109,000 people from a year before and 11.9 percent next a five-year normal for April.

On Apr 15, a highway – also famous as Newfound Gap Road – was non-stop after roughly 90 days of closure due to a landslide.

With a highway again open between Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Cherokee, N.C., park officials expect a lapse to ancestral visitation numbers during a residue of a year.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park announces 2013 firefly-viewing schedule

Park officials have announced the Elkmont Firefly Viewing event in Great Smoky Mountains National Park will take place from Thursday, June 6 through Thursday, June 13. For this year’s viewing event, the on-line ticketing system, operated through Recreation.gov, will again provide visitors with parking passes to guarantee they will be able to park at Sugarlands Visitor Center without the inconvenience of having to arrive hours in advance.

Every year in late May or early June, thousands of visitors gather near the popular Elkmont Campground to observe the naturally occurring phenomenon of Photinus carolinus; a firefly species that flashes synchronously. In 2005 the Park began closing the Elkmont entrance road each evening and operating a mandatory shuttle bus system to and from the viewing area to provide for visitor safety, resource protection, and to enhance the experience for both viewers and campers at Elkmont.

In 2012 the Park instituted the reservation requirement for the first time. This was in response to the increasing popularity of the event which caused management issues in the parking area and congestion for visitors accessing the Sugarlands Visitor Center. The new system improved the visitor experience by allowing reservation holders to arrive later in the day and guaranteed access to the event.

For this year’s event a parking pass will be required for all vehicles. The pass will cover a maximum of 6 persons in a single passenger vehicle (less than 19 feet in length). Four passes for oversize vehicles, like a mini bus (19 to 30 feet in length and up to 24 persons), will also be available. Each reservation will cost $1.50. Parking passes will be non-refundable, non-transferable, and good only for the date issued. There is a limit of one parking pass per household per season. Each reservation through www.Recreation.gov will receive an e- mailed confirmation and specific information about the event.

The number of passes issued for each day will be based on the Sugarlands Visitor Center parking lot capacity. Passes will be issued with staggered arrival times in order to relieve congestion in the parking lot and for boarding the shuttles.

The shuttle buses, which are provided in partnership with the City of Gatlinburg, will begin picking up visitors from the Sugarlands Visitor Center RV/bus parking area at 7:00 p.m. The cost will be $1 round trip per person, as in previous years, and collected when boarding the shuttle.

The shuttle service will be the only transportation mode for visitor access during this period, except for registered campers staying at the Elkmont Campground. Visitors will not be allowed to walk the Elkmont entrance road due to safety concerns.

The parking passes for this year’s event will be on sale on-line beginning after 10:00 a.m. April 29. The Park will hold back 90 passes for each day to accommodate individuals who did not learn of the need to pre purchase tickets. Those last 90 passes will go on sale on-line at 10:00 a.m. the day before the event and will be available until 3:30 p.m. on the day of the event or until the passes are all reserved.

Passes can be purchased at www.Recreation.gov. Parking passes may also be obtained by calling 1-877-444-6777, but Park officials strongly encourage the use of the on-line process, because it provides far more information to visitors about what to expect when they arrive at the Park. The $1.50 reservation fee covers the cost of processing the requests for the passes. The Park will not receive any revenue either from the reservations or the shuttle tickets.

US 441 reopened 3 months after Smokies landslide

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) —
The vital track over a Smoky Mountains is open to traffic, 3 months after a landslide took out a territory of it.

The National Park Service pronounced Monday that U.S. 441 was reopened during 10 a.m., permitting transport between Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Cherokee, N.C. The opening came a month forward of schedule.

On Jan. 13, a 200-foot-long territory of a two-lane highway slid a length of a football margin down a slope on a North Carolina side of a park.

“We commend a mercantile significance of a highway to a adjacent communities and are beholden that a partners during Federal Highways Administration were means to respond well to a need and work with a contractors to make a required repairs in reduction than 90 days,” pronounced Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

Phillips Jordan, Inc., was awarded a agreement value scarcely $4 million. It had incentives of $8,000 per day for early completion.

The final pattern includes pipes to concede for a drainage of subsurface H2O upsurge along with side drainage heading to a culvert during a finish of a slope.

Also on Monday, a park expelled visitation sum and they are down sharply.

The series of people entrance into a 500,000-acre park on a Tennessee-North Carolina limit in Mar was 465,594 — down 23.8 percent from a same month in 2012.

For 2013 to date, visits are off 47.4 percent from a park’s five-year visitation normal for a lowest first-quarter figure in over 5 years. The Jan by Mar sum was 983,664 visitors which, is 250,334 reduction than in 2012,

Park officials pronounced a diminution was expected due to a closure of U.S. 441 between Newfound Gap and Smokemont. They design visits to increase, now that a highway is again open and open has arrived.

Tennessee’s House Of Representatives Opposes Backcountry Fee At Great …

In its biggest political coup to date, a group fighting the backcountry fees charged at Great Smoky Mountains National Park has gotten the backing of the Tennessee State House of Representatives.

In a proclamation adopted April 9, the House expressed its “opposition to the imposition of any backcountry camping fees in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that are not directly associated with the use of amenities or a commercial purpose and strongly urge an immediate appeal of any such imposed fee.”

Previously, the Knox County (Tennessee) Commission, as well the commissions in Bradley and Blount counties in Tennessee and Swain County in North Carolina, condemned the fee and called for its repeal.

The backcountry fee of $4 per night per person, with a $20 per person cap per trip, took effect February 13. It is intended by park officials to help streamline and improve the backcountry permitting process and heighten the presence of rangers in the backcountry.

Pinched by an inadequate budget and unable to charge an entrance fee for any of the roughly 9 million yearly visitors, park officials say they see no way of improving visitor services and protecting backcountry resources without charging users who spend the night in the woods.

The park can’t charge an entrance fee because the state of Tennessee, when it agreed to transfer land to the federal government for the park, essentially forbade it.

“By condemning and calling for a repeal of this hugely unpopular and specious tax on backcountry users, the State of Tennessee has proven its intent to provide a voice for citizens that was ignored by the National Park Service as evidenced in the public comments that tallied 18-1 in opposition to the fee,” said a statement from Southern Forest Watch, a non-profit group organized to lobby for the fee’s repeal.

Renovated Sugarlands Visitor Center rededicated

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — The newly renovated Sugarlands Visitor Center has been rededicated in a Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson told The Mountain Press ( http://bit.ly/YJJgOV) there’s an updated clarity of attainment now when visitors travel in.

Among a changes were relocating a information table to a behind wall to make it a concentration of attention, updating a exhibits, installing LED lights to preserve energy, putting in new flooring and portrayal a interior a appreciative shade of green.

The badge was cut Saturday by park officials and park boosters, a Great Smoky Mountains Association and a Friends of a Smokies.

Park crews worked during dusk hours during a winter, so a core remained open for visitors.

About 850,000 visitors come by a core annually.

US 441 reopened 3 months after Smokies landslide

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — The vital track over a Smoky Mountains is open to traffic, 3 months after a landslide took out a territory of it.

The National Park Service pronounced Monday that U.S. 441 was reopened during 10 a.m., permitting transport between Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Cherokee, N.C.

On Jan. 13, a 200-foot-long territory of a two-lane highway slid a length of a football margin down a slope on a North Carolina side of a park.

The opening came a month forward of schedule.

“We commend a mercantile significance of a highway to a adjacent communities and are beholden that a partners during Federal Highways Administration and were means to respond well to a need and work with a contractors to make a required repairs in reduction than 90 days,” pronounced Mokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

Phillips Jordan, Inc., was awarded a scarcely $4 million contract. It had incentives of $8,000 per day for early completion.

The final pattern includes pipes to concede for a drainage of subsurface H2O upsurge along with side drainage heading to a culvert during a finish of a slope.

Also on Monday, a park expelled visitation sum and they are down sharply.

The series of people entrance into a 500,000-acre park on a Tennessee-North Carolina limit in Mar was 465,594 – down 23.8 percent from a same month in 2012.

For 2013 to date, visits are off 47.4 percent from a park’s five-year visitation normal for a lowest first-quarter figure in over 5 years. The Jan by Mar sum was 983,664 visitors which, is 250,334 reduction than in 2012,

Park officials pronounced a diminution was expected due to a closure of U.S. 441 between Newfound Gap and Smokemont. They design visits to increase, now that a highway is again open and open has arrived.

Park officials check prescribed bake in Smokies – WATE

GATLINBURG (WATE) – A devise to bake 178 acres in a Great Smoky Mountains National Park was put on reason Wednesday since of continue conditions.

The tranquil bake was designed for Wednesday to revoke a risk of an rash fire. Park officials called off a burn, however, when a continue foresee called for blowing winds.

A National Park Service glow organisation intends to bake brush only inside a park range south of Wears Valley in Sevier County. Wear Cove Gap Road, Indian Camp Branch, Little River Road and a park range approximate a dictated bake area.

Wears Valley Fire Department and Townsend Fire Department were scheduled to assist.

The park use has a multiyear devise to revoke a buildup of incendiary debris. The area scheduled for the prescribed bake was final burnt in 2009.

When a bake takes place, Roundtop Trail will be closed, though Wear Cove Gap Road will sojourn open.

Park officials devise prescribed bake in Smokies

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — Officials devise to bake 178 acres in a Great Smoky Mountains National Park to revoke a risk of an rash fire.

Weather permitting, a tranquil bake takes place on Wednesday only inside a park range south of Wears Valley in Sevier County. The area is restrained by Wear Cove Gap Road, Indian Camp Branch, Little River Road and a park boundary.

A National Park Service glow organisation will control a prescribed burn. Engines from Wears Valley Fire Department and Townsend Fire Department will unit a lines.

The area was final burnt in 2009 as a partial of a multiyear devise to revoke a buildup of incendiary debris.

Roundtop Trail will be closed. Wear Cove Gap Road will sojourn open, though visitors should demeanour out for glow crew and equipment.

Landslide delays visits to 2 Smokies cemeteries

GATLINBURG, Tenn. — Visitation during dual cemeteries in a Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been changed from this month to autumn since of inundate repairs to roads.

Visitation had been scheduled for Apr 28 during Branton and Lower Noland cemeteries on a North Carolina side of a park, though park officials contend a poignant landslide occurred on a tomb entrance road.

The park and member of a North Shore Cemetery Association rescheduled a visitation to coincide with a Wiggins Creek tomb visits on Oct. 13.

Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson pronounced park officials have done repairs to a highway a priority so visits to a to Branton, Lower Noland and Wiggins cemeteries can all be done in a fall.