Smokies park sets visitation record at 12.5M Great Smoky Mountains National Park can now put a number on the record visitation last year — 12,547,743

PHOTO BY ROBERT BERLIN

Cars exit the Wears Valley end of the Foothills Parkway that opened in November 2018 for the first time after the completion of bridges that eliminated the “missing link.”

The park already knew when the November 2019 stats came in that the Smokies had set an annual visitation record by topping the 1,126,540 total for 2018 even without the December numbers. Recent data gave it the official stamp.

Superintendent Cassius Cash said he was proud of park employees and volunteers who helped enhance visitor experiences while protecting the park’s resources during this period of growth. “With growing visitation, this has become more challenging. In 2020, we’ll be inviting people to help us thoughtfully look at how we can improve access and continue caring for this very special place,” he said. As noted by park officials, finishing construction of the bridges that filled in the “missing link” of the parkway allows visitors to experience more mountain views with less congestion. The higher numbers were no surprise. Continue to page 27

Scenic View of Gatlinburg

From page 26 Monthly visitation records were set during January, March, April, May, June and December. In both April and May, about 1 million people visited. Before 2015, park visitation had not exceeded 1 million visitors per month until the summer and fall months. “All of the park entrances had increased visitation. That includes the Townsend entrance, the Gatlinburg entrance and the Oconaluftee entrance. For the interior of the park, those main entrances, visitation was up roughly 5%,” Dana Soehn, Smokies spokeswoman, said Monday. “Then when you couple in all of the outlying areas, including that new section of Foothills Parkway West, we saw a 20 percent increase for all of the outlier areas. And most of that was because of the increase in visitation on the Foothills Parkway.” The result: In 2019 on Foothills Parkway West from Chilhowee to Wears Valley, the park saw 1.5 million visitors, up from 623,814 in 2017. “Typically, to give some comparison before the new section was finished, if we just looked at visitation along that section from Chilhowee to Walland, in 2017 that number for total visitation was just over 600,000,” Soehn said.“So the visitation on the Foothills Parkway has more than doubled with the opening of the new section.” To broaden the comparison, 1.5 million visitors on the Foothills Parkway brings the total to about half of the number of visitors in 2018 to Olympic National Park.