Smokies’ missing link nears completion

Associated Press

WALLAND, Tenn.

Efforts to extend a serpentine ridge-top road with soaring views of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have been thwarted for decades as engineers have grappled with how to complete a 1.6-mile stretch known as the missing link.

A $35 million commitment this summer by the federal government, National Park Service and the state of Tennessee means the 10-bridge stretch can finally be completed, thrilling supporters who say it will open up one of the most scenic areas of the Foothills Parkway, but concerning those who say the project has gotten too expensive and poses a threat to the environment.

To Sen. Lamar Alexander, a former two-term Tennessee governor, the wait for and cost of bridging the missing link will have been worth it once visitors are able to take what he calls “one of the most picturesque drives in our country with a view of the most-visited national park in our country.”

The new segment scheduled to open within two years will end up costing about $244 million in today’s dollars. Work on the missing link was halted in 1989 after retaining walls failed and contractors exposed pyrite, a mineral better known as fool’s gold, which forms sulfuric acid when it comes into contact with rain. The toxic brew dissolves metals in bedrock and can wash into streams and rivers, choking off plants and wildlife and coating streambeds with iron hydroxide, tinting water yellow, red or orange.

Along with the engineering and environmental problems, escalating costs kept the missing link on the back burner until the late 2000s, when the federal government agreed to pay for the longest part of it: an 800-foot, S-shaped bridge designed to disturb as little earth as possible and costing $25 million. The money was provided through the 2009 Recovery Act, the federal response to the Great Recession.

Even after the bridges are built, half of the proposed 72-mile-long Foothills Parkway will remain unfinished: Land to construct the last 34 miles has been acquired, but no work has yet been done.