Blount County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Blount County

Seventy-five years from authorization in 1944 to final completion in November 2018 — that is the construction timeline for the Foothills Parkway, a 33-mile two-lane NPS-administered scenic parkway running along the southern boundary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park through Blount County, and the longest gestation of any NPS-built scenic road in the United States per the Federal Highway Administration Eastern Federal Lands Highway construction history. Sections opened piecemeal beginning in 1968, but the central 16-mile 'Missing Link' between Wears Valley and Walland was the engineering bottleneck: the terrain required ten bridges across drainages that the contemporary 1960s technology could not span economically, and the project sat dormant from the 1980s through 2009 before a final $48 million completion contract finally finished the bridge sequence and paved the through-route. The Foothills Parkway is the only NPS-managed scenic road in Tennessee that prohibits all commercial truck and bus traffic and enforces a 35 mph speed limit through every Cove-and-Valley overlook.

Blount County's 559 sq mi wrap Townsend (population 449, officially marketed as 'The Peaceful Side of the Smokies' by the Townsend Visitor Center, distinguishing the western GSMNP entrance from the Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg tourism saturation 25 miles east on US-441), the western GSMNP entrance at Townsend on TN-73 leading into Cades Cove, the Tremont area along the Middle Prong of the Little River, and Maryville (population 30,030, the county seat and the gateway to McGhee Tyson Airport — Knoxville's primary commercial field, with TN ANG's 134th Air Refueling Wing also based there). Cades Cove Loop Road inside GSMNP is one of the most-trafficked scenic drives in the entire eastern NPS system; the 11-mile one-way loop closes to vehicles every Wednesday May through September for cycling-only access. Cades Cove Campground accepts rigs to 40 ft year-round on reservation through recreation.gov. Tremont Campground (group sites only, by NPS Compendium) and Abrams Creek Campground (rigs to 30 ft, 16 sites, no hookups, first-come basis) are the alternative GSMNP loops inside Blount County. Cherokee National Forest's Tellico Ranger District permits 14-day dispersed at signed sites with rigs to 30 ft. Townsend Municipal Code prohibits overnight RV street parking outside the designated commercial-campground network.