While Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona offer limited facilities, curtailed access and shortages of basic services due to the continuing shutdown of the government, the most visited of all our national parks, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is operating as usual.

At least for now.

It’s peak “leaf peeping” time in the Smoky Mountains. Visitors are thronging in to watch as summer turns into fall.

GSMNP is fully operational due to it being a tremendous driver of the local economies of both Tennessee and North Carolina.

More than 12.2 million people visited the park in 2024, adding $2.86 billion dollars to the local economies. But GSMNP isn’t just the most visited of our national parks, it’s also the single largest driver of the local economies that surround it. GSMNP is credited with providing jobs in everything from tour and adventure guiding to hotels and restaurants for more than 20,000 individuals. According to the National Park Service, that makes it the largest single contributor to the local economies of all our national parks.

With leaf peeping season in full swing, tourists from across the country are visiting GSMNP in what officials say are record numbers. With the influx, however, comes the inevitable logjam of traffic on GSMNP roads.

With fall’s changing leaves and dropping temperatures GSMNP and surrounding towns and attractions are booming. But everyone from restaurant operators to park rangers are well aware that the park and its services are, essentially, living on borrowed time.

That’s because the 200+ National Park Service staffers working to handle heavy traffic and crowded facilities are only exempted from the shutdown through November 2.

NPS Ranger Dexter Armstrong took time from answering questions, directing traffic and helping visitors operate parking permit machines to talk about the potential changes.

“Unlike NPS employees at the other parks, we’ve been exempted - at least through November 2- due to the terrific impact this park has on the local economies,” he told me, “but we’re like everyone else when it comes to what happens after that. We’re hoping something positive can be worked out because the park’s so important to the area.”

It’s important enough that a coalition that includes the States of Tennessee and North Carolina, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, and myriad city and country governments and the Friends of the Smokies nonprofit, have created agreements that have paid for the park’s continued operations. At this writing, their agreements are set to expire on November 2.

With the Sugarlands Visitor Center open, GSMNP visitors were able to purchase parking permits (top). Those funds were added to the contributions of the Tennessee/North Carolina/Cherokee coalition for daily operations. The seemingly endless throng of visitors kept NPS Ranger Dexter Armstrong (bottom) busy answering questions- including “are you getting paid?"

The coalition formed to get the park fully reopened on October 4, following suspension of services due to the shutdown. Under the agreement, areas that were previously closed, such as Sugarlands Visitor Center, Chimneys Picnic Area, and Cades Cove Loop Road, Visitor Center, and Picnic Area, were reopened and fully operational.

The funding also ensured staff to service restrooms, respond to visitors in need, and provide essential services to protect wildlife during this peak visitor season.

Under the agreement, local and state partners funded $61,703.18 each day to ensure full operations of the national park. The national park funded remaining daily operational costs through recreation fee revenue, which includes revenue from campgrounds and parking tags.

So what happens after November 2?

If no federal funding agreement is reached by November 2, staff at GSMNP will likely face furlough, and many park facilities and services will close.

Emergency personnel would remain on duty. The park would revert to a state like the last shutdown, which involved furloughs and limited visitor services.

As we get closer to November 2, the coalition members tell us they’re working to try and keep the agreement with the federal government going.

Even if the shutdown does hit GSMNP, the coalition says the efforts to keep it open through October will have been worth it.

Sevier County (TN) Mayor Larry Waters told reporters October was a “banner month” for sales tax receipts from visitors staying, playing and eating in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.

“It’s one of our biggest tourism months,” Waters said, “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,’ it would have had a very detrimental effect on our tourism industry.”

With the region headed into its annual slowdown period, every visitor, room night, and meal helped by the coalition has businesses better prepare for a normal slowdown.

One restaurant server told me “we can handle natural disasters because we come together here. But the government shutdown isn’t a natural disaster; it’s a political one.”

We’ll keep you posted.

— Jim Shepherd