The Foothills Parkway was born in 1944, the result of a compromise with the State of Tennessee when theBlue Ridge Parkway was located away from the state and kept in North Carolina. A compromise of some sorts, the Parkway was designed to trace the top of the foothills to the west of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, extending 70 miles in length. Administered by the National Park Service, the Foothills Parkway is not a state controlled roadway. It is a roadway much like the Natchez Trace Parkway and Blue Ridge Parkway in that it has a buffer from development, no commercial traffic is permitted, the roadway is designed to blend in harmoniously with nature and access to the road is limited to specific interchanges.

Today, the road is a symbol of government failing to live up to what it sets out to do, and the completion of the road has met resistance fromboth the left and the right. Far from complete, the roadway exists in two segments extending from the western end near Maryville and the eastern end near Newport. The western end of the route in Blount County is the longer part of the route, extending 17 miles from U.S. 129 at Lake Chilhowee to U.S. 321 (TN 73) in the Walland community. The eastern end in Cocke County is 8 miles long extending from I-40 to U.S. 321 (TN 32) in the Cosby community.

Inbetween these segments, it gets more interesting. The first of those is a very notorious 16-mile "missing link" section extends from the eastern terminus of the western segment in Walland to U.S. 321 (TN 73) in Wears Valley. This section has sat mostly idle for decades with work progressing extremely slowly as work is sluggishly underway to join the 1.6 mile gap in the route along Webb Mountain on the Blount/Sevier County line. Filling this gap is a very expensive project that includes 12 viaducts built into the side of the mountain in an area that was deemed too steep, unstable and environmentally destructive to support the traditional cut and fill.

The remaining segments, while not connecting to the Parkway itself except on paper, are collectively known as the "Spur". The "Spur" is essentially the combination of U.S. 321/441 between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg and the Gatlinburg By-Pass. The Spur is essentially a dualized roadway running along the West Fork Pigeon River with the southbound lanes running west of the river and the northbound lanes running east. The northbound lanes were built more recently, and includes a tunnel along part of it. This roadway ties into the Gatlinburg By-Pass, which runs west of Gatlinburg and ends where Newfound Gap Road (known unofficially as U.S. 441) rejoins the route to the south.

Much problems and controversy surrounds the completion of the project. The Right views the road as pork and waste even though it would greatly alleviate traffic problems in the region and provide a scenic alternative to the winding, cluttered and severely congested routes currently in the area. The Left opposes the road on accounts of environmental problems the road presents as well as the damage to the view of the mountainside. However, in terms of damage to the mountainside this seems inconsequential when compared to how the road might have saved Cove Mountain from the dense coverage of weekend cabins that blights it today.

Also, the Parkway exists along what is known locally as the Smoky Mountain Fault, part of a major faultline extending from Mobile Bay in Alabama to New York. The result is that the land along the roadway is on very fractured rock and soil, which is extremely unstable and prone to acidity. Because of this, numerous slides have plagued the parkway and the work on the missing link was halted in 1990 over the failure of the cut and fill along the 1.6 mile gap that required a redesign and greatly increased the cost. These problems have put the completion of the Parkway...even the missing link...in doubt, but at least the Park Service has now committed to funding the completion of at least the Missing Link.

Somewhat contrary to its intended purpose, the Foothills Parkway is needed largely to relieve traffic congestion in the region and also actually as a means to promote more conservation in the area as the foothills region of the Smokies continues to fill with development in the once isolated coves. The drawback to this is the cost of building in such steep terrain, not only in construction costs, but also in maintenance. It was stated several years ago that it would cost over $300 million to finish the entire Parkway, and so far money has come very slowly for building the complex viaducts on Webb Mountain, only two which are currently complete. Meanwhile, work on the remaining portions has not even been discussed since the Parkway again became an issue in the late 1990's and work to complete the missing link again commenced.

In all, it is hoped that you will enjoy the photos and that this returning original Peach State Roads feature will inspire support for the completion of the longest incomplete federal project in U.S. History.

Disclaimer: This site is not created, affiliated nor endorsed by the National Park Service, State of Tennessee or Tennessee Department of Transportation. The information here was compiled from memory from various sources, and not all were available to create this document. No material here was directly copied from any source and additional sources will be provided when found, because much of the content here was compiled from memory.