NEWS RELEASES
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through Knoxville News Sentinel's website.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park has set an attendance record with 12,547,743 visitors in 2019. Visits were up 1.1 million more than the previous year. The Foothills Parkway scenic drive between Walland and Wears Valley has skyrocketed in popularity with more than 1 million visitors. Sarah Riley, writer for the Knoxville News Sentinel, covers in her article, "The park’s primary Tennessee entrances near Gatlinburg and Townsend plus North Carolina's entrance at Cherokee all saw increased use, accounting for about two-thirds of the total park visitation. Visiting the national park is free." Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the country. Visitors are more consistently reporting traffic congestion, busy restrooms and over-full parking areas throughout the year. These are some of the issues the park will explore over the next year.To read more on Great Smoky Mountains National Park, click here.