adds that maintenance improvements will be incremental
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
After almost a year, the Great Smoky Mountains’ Park It Forward parking pass program that caused controversy in Swain County is going strong, according to National Park Service spokeswoman Emily Davis. Improvements are slow-going, however, and will take more time.
Davis said this year saw $9.6 million coming in from a combination of the Park It Forward fees, a parking fee applied parkwide, and camping fees. That exceeded their estimate of around $7.7 million for the first year of Park It Forward – and the camping fees alone only brought in $3.1 million in 2022 before the parking passes began.
Davis said they would add more personnel to the parks in 2024, including seven preventative rangers and eight roving park rangers.
The preventative rangers will be there to aid visitors in the park, including helping them prepare for hikes and giving information on whatever trails are nearby, including what appropriate precautions to take.
The roving rangers will be tasked with other general park questions, including telling people about Park It Forward and other rules for the park.
“We want them to meet our visitors where they are, at the popular trailheads, like Newfound Gap and Clingman’s Dome,” Davis said.
The Park It Forward program has been unpopular with locals in Swain County, though, with many decrying the fact that they now have to pay to park at Deep Creek and other close by areas of the park where they live.
Davis and other NPS officials say “100% of the funds” from the program are going toward the upkeep of the park. At a recent commission meeting, Commissioner Roger Parsons wondered where the money was going, saying he had been out to the park and seen several areas that needed to be cleaned up.
Davis said things would take time and there was a “backlog.” She said the NPS had plans for 2024 in terms of maintenance and upkeep that they hadn’t started yet.
“There’s a lot of need across the park,” Davis said. “I’d like to get everything done in the first year, but it’s not realistic.”
She said the plan included more parking spaces added near Laurel Falls, which she said would improve visitor flow and access. The Park Service also wants to hire a hazard tree crew that could respond to various downed trees and other problems obstructing trails.
“We want to have road maintenance to respond quickly to road, bridge or tunnel issues,” Davis said. “We want to maintain road safety for all visitors. It will require a lot of time to get the project going.”
Finally, Davis said there would be more cleaning at busy visitors’ stations and restrooms, and the Park Service wanted to increase education and install more signs to instruct people on how to use Park It Forward and “have all the information they need, when they need it.”