Great Smoky Mountains Parkway

The Great Smoky Mountains Parkway is a highway that travels 25.6 miles (41.2 km) between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Interstate 40 (I-40) in Kodak, Tennessee, in East Tennessee. It serves as the main thoroughfare for Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville, and includes a 4.3-mile (6.9 km) spur of the Foothills Parkway. It is composed of sections of several numbered highways, including U.S. Route 441 (US 441), US 321, State Route 66 (SR 66) and SR 448. Most of the route is a six-lane divided highway, with the southern segment containing four lanes. The road roughly follows the Little Pigeon River for most of its length.

The parkway serves as the primary means of access to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the United States, and the numerous tourist attractions located within the cities of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg. Most of the route follows an old Native American trail that had existed for many centuries prior to the arrival of European American settlers. After the establishment of the national park in 1934, an effort began to improve the network of roads serving the park. Much of the modern route was constructed and expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, and the northern portion of the route was constructed on a new alignment to connect Sevierville to I-40 in the 1970s. Due to the rapid rise in tourism, the parkway is now one of the most congested non-freeway routes in the state, carrying more than 50,000 vehicles per day in some locations. Between the late 1980s and mid-2010s, the parkway was further expanded and improved to handle increasing traffic volumes.