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Here’s how your Great Smoky Mountains National Park parking and camping fees are used
Improved visitor safety: Seven rangers now make up the park’s first Preventative Search and Rescue team. The team of trained medics and EMS professionals aims to reduce search and rescue missions through visitor preparation, education and information. They also respond to search and rescue incidents throughout the park. You’ll likely run into them on the trails.
Increased park ranger presence:Eight park rangers have been hired to provide information to visitors throughout the park. These rangers have made over 117,000 visitor contacts, picked up 612 pounds of trash, and assisted with dozens of search and rescue missions, car crashes and wildlife encounters since March 2023, according to the park.
Improved roads and facilities. Additional employees will be hired to help maintain roads, bridges and tunnels in the park. These crews will be able to quickly repair road shoulders, patch potholes and replace damaged signs and fences.
Revenue also will be used for campground and picnic area maintenance, to replace horse stalls at Tow String Horse Camp and resurface the Cosby access road and replace sidewalks in the Cosby picnic area. Other projects at campgrounds throughout the park are in the works.
Enhanced visitor experience:Fifty new parking places will be added at Laurel Falls Revenue Trailhead. Construction of the parking spaces is scheduled begin later this year. Revenue will be used to rehabilitate Mingus Mill, a historic gristmill near Oconaluftee
Visitor Center, and to provide accessible amenities and campsites at Look Rock Campground.
Other enhancements and improvements funded by recreation revenue include a team of arborists to quickly remove downed trees that block roads or create unsafe conditions, especially after major storms, replacing steel bearproof dumpsters across the park and increasing the cleaning cycle at some of the park’s most used restrooms, such as the Sugarlands Visitor Center.
What to know about parking fees in the Smokies
The Park it Forward program requires $5 daily, $15 weekly or $40 annual parking tags for vehicles parked for longer than 15 minutes.
Daily and weekly parking tags are available at more than 30 credit card kiosks located in lots across the park or at recreation.gov. The $40 annual tags, and all parking tag types, are available online at smokieslife.org. Annual tags are valid for one year from the date of purchase.
Devarrick Turner is a trending news reporter. Email devarrick.turner@knoxnews.com . On X, formerly known as Twitter @dturner1208 .