As stated in the background page, the Foothills Parkway first was proposed in 1944 when the Blue Ridge Parkway was moved away from the state. The Parkway was an ambitious proposal of the time, and it was proposed in an era that was more favorable to projects such as this as they were a continuation of programs begun during the Great Depression to create jobs. In addition, environmental regulations were virtually non-existant then and the cost to complete the road was far less than today. The original purpose of the Parkway was to create a route where people driving the route could get panoramic views of the Great Smoky Mountains from the smaller mountains to the west. Unfortunately, the Foothills Parkway got a late start and this began a trail of red tape and red mud that has continued to plague the project since its inception.

Work first began on the Parkway in the mid-1960's with work underway on both ends, and the agreement was that the State of Tennessee would purchase the Right-of-Way and would oversee the project, but the completed road would be built to Park Service standards and maintenance would be overseen by the Park Service. The western end was under construction from Lake Chilhowee to west of Carrs Creek Road and the eastern end from I-40 to Cosby. The plan was apparently that the two segments would meet in the middle and by 1968, around 30 of the planned 70 miles were complete. A by-pass around Gatlinburg, named the "Foothills Parkway Spur" in conjunction with newly constructed northbound lanes on U.S. 441 between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge were also completed during that time. The Spur ends near where the Parkway is projected to one day cross. The work in the 1960's looked to be progressing quickly, but this was the 1960's and this was where the project came to a screeching halt.

While the road was complete and open to traffic, the western end had a stub that extended east of then Tennessee State Route 73, and dead-ended about five miles to the east. With the roadway built in unstable terrain, slides began to plague the new road and this sparsely traveled portion was closed the next year after opening. Along with that, the costs of the Vietnam War were taking a toll on the project and after 1969, no further construction was started. In addition, the Parkway was caught up in a wave of anti-road building in the park that stemmed from the halt of another project: the North Shore Road near Bryson City in North Carolina. This was significant because the environmental damage from the Anakeesta rock cuts were swaying political sentiments against further road building in the park. The Foothills Parkway and North Shore Road, after all, were once planned to tie together as a "Ring Around the Park" road. Even today, debate continues on this North Shore Road and such views are jeapordizing the completion of the Foothills Parkway as well.

Fortunately, after almost 20 years of delays, work began once again on the Foothills Parkway. This part of the project involved extending the stub near Walland east to connect to Wears Valley Road (now U.S. 321). The state had the right-of-ways purchased and work began in 1986 to connect this portion of the road. Unfortunately, as the road was nearing completion, the State did not take into account how steep and unstable the terrain was. Around 1989, on Webb Mountain where the road project was the steepest, the cut and fill gave way proving that loose rock and steep mountainside could not support a road. While the rest of the project was completed aside from signage, the final coat of pavement and guardrails, the project once again halted and the "Missing Link" was born from the 1.6 mile gap. During that time, politics also steered all funding from the project and no work was completed throughout the 1990's with speculation that it never would be.

In the late 1990's, local U.S. Representative John Duncan revived the push for the completion of the Parkway, including opening the road over a couple weekends to traffic in 1999. His interest in the project revived work on the project and around 2000, work began again to complete the 1.6 mile gap. The work would be expensive and complex, however, as the Missing Link would now have to be filled with 10 viaducts built on the side of the mountain with a top-down design that would minimize construction impacts and could be sturdy in such terrain. This design had been used previously on the Linn Cove Viaduct of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1980's and was considered an engineering marvel in the time. The price was steep, though. The completion of these viaducts is near a third of the projected cost to complete the Parkway, and initial projections for the completion of the project in 2000 was for the road to be completed no sooner than 2011 for only 1.6 miles of roadway. Nevertheless, two of the 10 bridges (Bridges #10 and #9) were completed except for guardrails in 2003.

The Foothills Parkway, while potentially very beneficial to the region, continues to face problems. In an unusually soggy spring day in 2003, another slide occured on the Parkway west of Look Rock, closing the road for over a year. Such costly repairs as this continue to plague the completion of the road, but it must be considered that the open parts of the Parkway are among the least scenic and the most difficult to reach from major routes. The traffic flow and use of the road would be vastly different on the portions currently incomplete.

Today, fortunately such mishaps have not stopped work on the Parkway, and work is slowly commencing on finishing these bridges on the Missing Link with Bridge #8 underway and Bridges #1 and #2 planned to begin soon. While this is underway, however, no mention of any additional work east of Wears Valley or west of Cosby is available. Studies were conducted in the 1990's, however on the feasability of that project and it is not known if the outcome was for the project not to be built or if it is simply on long-term hold. This information was available as recently as 2003, but has since disappeared from the web. It has now been over 60 years. Will it take another 60 years to complete? Will it even matter or be possible once Knoxville sprawl has overtaken the right-of-way of the route? Time is crucial because time has moved too slowly.