8 Visiting The Smokies Summer 2020
Photo By Scott Keller Visitors to Cades Cove make their way around the 11-mile loop the first day the park reopened to the public following COVID-19 related closures.
Smokies face strange but progressive year It’s been anything but a normal year for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
From the start of 2020, things were changing for the park, beginning with repairs on the Bote Mountain Tunnel over Laurel Creek Road and continuing with changes on when and how visitors can tour Cades Cove. In the middle of these two big events, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all the facilities in the park from March 24 to May 9, causing the park to register an unprecedented low number of visitors. GSMNP visitor statistics show that April numbers were down nearly 100% from April 2019: By the end of the month, only 146,246 people had come through the Townsend entrance to the most visited park in the United States, compared to 358,000 by the end of April 2019. Closures caused by the pandemic created these
numbers, but before March, the tunnel repairs already had taken their toll, closing Cades Cove to vehicle traffic for nearly two months. The work was necessary, however. Years of water damage and general wear and tear meant that the tunnel would eventually become unsafe without maintenance. North Carolina crews came to Townsend in February and wrapped up construction in late February. But less than a month later, the Cove was closed again as social distancing standards pummeled the U.S. National Park’s normal operations. Right before that, data from Google shows people were flocking to the park, especially during weeks when millions of Americans’ work lives just stopped. Continue to page 9
