How Great Smoky Mountains National Park was reopened by local leaders

The current plan, spearheaded by Sevier County, keeps the nation’s most visited park operational through Nov. 2.
It costs roughly $85,000 per day to keep the park open, with funds coming from local counties, cities and nonprofit groups.
Local officials feared a shutdown during the peak autumn tourist season would have a detrimental effect on the local economy.
A week before the federal government shutdown started Oct. 1, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters began talking out loud about ways to keep the Great Smoky Mountains National Park open during a vital tourist season.
A congressional stalemate gave him the opportunity to act. And he already had the outline in place.
Three weeks later and counting, the county’s plan has kept the nation’s most-visited national park open to visitors coming to see the leaves change color. It took the help of a consortium of local partners who set an example, proving not every government body is as dysfunctional as the one in Washington.
The financial agreement Waters and other local leaders reached will keep the park fully operational through Nov. 2. Beyond that date, should the shutdown continue, they will have to figure out what’s next.
“I wish the federal government would look at us working together and getting this done,” Waters, who will retire next year after 48 years as mayor, told Knox News in his office Oct. 20. “I think it’s a good template for governments working in the interests of people.”
How does the agreement to keep the national park open work?
When a shutdown seemed inevitable, Waters got on the phone with Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s interim superintendent, Charles Sellars. With help from state officials and both U.S. senators’ offices, they had a plan in place by the time the government shutdown began Oct. 1.
The park was fully operational Oct. 3 while others across the country were – and remain – closed or partially closed.
The nonprofit group Friends of the Smokies has a thorough history and explanation of how past shutdowns have impacted the Smokies here.
Logistically, it’s rather simple. The Department of the Interior preferred to work with just one agency, Waters said, so Sevier County stepped in as the conduit.
Each group contributed different amounts. The state of Tennessee, Blount, Cocke and Sevier counties, Gatlinburg, Pittman Center, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Friends of the Smokies all chipped in for every week the park is closed. Tennessee will pay $80,000, and the rest will pay approximately $45,000 each, except for Cocke County, which is dealing with recovery from Hurricane Helene.
Sevier County wires the money to the federal government and, over the coming weeks and months, the local governments will pay Sevier County back.
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The cost to keep everything open – visitors centers, bathrooms and campgrounds – is estimated to be roughly $85,000 a day. The figure is offset by revenues from the Park It Forward parking tag program, according to a previous news release from Sevier County.
The funding will, among other things, go to paying park employees who would otherwise be furloughed.
Will everyone be reimbursed?
There’s no guarantee any of the agencies involved will be reimbursed by the federal government, Waters said, but he’s hopeful money will come back as it has in the past.
But even if the county isn’t reimbursed, the effort will have been worth it, he said. At least for October, when the county has had a “banner month” in sales tax receipts from visitors who stay and play in nearby Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.
“Because that’s one of our biggest tourism months,” he said. “We have so many folks that come to the area and they come to the area primarily to go to the mountains and see the beautiful colors we have. So, the park is the biggest draw we have in the month of October.
“And if word had gotten out, ‘Well, don’t come to the Smoky Mountains, you can’t see anything because the park’s partially shut down,’ I think it would have had a very detrimental effect on our tourism industry.”
Practice makes perfect for a government shutdown
One positive aspect of the routine threats of federal government shutdowns is it has allowed local governments to build up muscle memory on how to cope.
During the 17-day shutdown in 2013, the state of Tennessee and Sevier and Blount counties agreed to keep the park fully operational Oct. 16-20 with the state covering 80% of the costs. This ended up being mostly unnecessary after the federal government reopened Oct. 17.
During 2019’s 35-day shutdown, as trash and human waste became an issue in the park, Friends of the Smokies and the Great Smoky Mountains Association (now Smokies Life), provided funding to reopen some restrooms and the visitor centers at Sugarlands and Oconaluftee for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, according to Friends of the Smokies.
The agreement would have kept visitor centers open during weekends for the following month but the shutdown ended. The groups were later reimbursed.
What happens next?
This time, the original plan with the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service was to keep the park fully operational through Nov. 2, and the group’s latest two-week extension fills that time period.
If the shutdown goes beyond Nov. 2, the group of local governments would have to renew an agreement with the federal government to extend it.
The number of visitors to the park historically dips precipitously from November through February, so the calculation might change on whether a fully operational park is worth the expense, Waters allowed, though Thanksgiving weekend has become one of the busiest weekends of the year.
It would be up to the park, he said, whether there might be an option where, like in 2019, some things can be opened and others remained closed.