Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN & NC
Although Great Smoky Mountains National Park sees more visitors year-round than any other park, winter is its lightest tourist time. Besides being especially accessible to East Coasters, the North Carolina-Tennessee scenery is pretty overwhelming—even when under a sheath of downy white. Half the winter days have highs in the 50s, and snowfalls usually occur only in the highlands. (via January Parks and the Outdoors Travel Guide | GORP.com.)
Smokies park struggling to clamp down on hog infestation
There are few places where wild hogs are less welcome than in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The park’s hog population traces its lineage to the early 1920s, when a herd of European hogs escaped from a game reserve on Hooper’s Bald in the mountains of Graham County, N.C. By the 1940s, the wild hogs had infiltrated the park, where they began to wreak havoc on the ecosystem by eating rare plants and salamanders, defecating in streams and turning up the ground.
Biologists believe the wild hogs that invaded the park already had crossed with free-ranging domestic pigs. Their appearance, however, retained the lean hips, large tusks, straight tails and black hair of their European ancestors. (via Smokies park struggling to clamp down on hog infestation» Knoxville News Sentinel.)
Park and TDOT Working to Improve Detour Around Spur (US 441) Rockslide
January 26, 2010. Great Smoky Mountains National Park managers and officials from the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) met Tuesday to develop plans to improve the traffic flow and safety of the mile-long detour that carries southbound US 441 traffic around Monday night’s rockslide. Currently the south-bound traffic is being diverted onto one of the two lanes that normally carry north-bound traffic, creating two-way traffic flow.
The slide occurred on the portion of the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge Spur which is owned by the State of Tennessee, so TDOT has sole responsibility for repairs of the slide itself. The rest of the 5 mile-long Spur, including the detour area, is part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so the two agencies are working jointly to manage traffic during the closure of the south-bound Spur which TDOT believes may last a month or more. (via Great Smoky Mountains National Park – Park and TDOT Working to Improve Detour Around Spur (US 441) Rockslide (U.S. National Park Service))