Chronic underfunding, Congressional inaction and proposed cuts to staffing have led to concerns about the operational capacity of the parks at a time when local economies, especially in Western North Carolina, need them most. 

Picture this — you and your partner and the kids hop in the car for your annual family vacation, driving down from Kalamazoo, Keokuk, Kenosha or Kokomo with the promise of visiting the pristine, picturesque paradise you saw in a commercial or in a dog-eared magazine at the barber shop. After irritable hours on the interstate, the subtle slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains begin to rise in your windshield. You’re close. The kids are getting restless. Rambunctious even. It’s almost time to begin weaving enduring memories into the gauzy fabric of their childhoods by taking the selfies that will earn you the envy of the whole damn HOA. 

When you arrive, the experience is very different from the one you thought you’d bought.

You’re greeted by an hours-long traffic jam like you typically see on your commute to work. There’s been a wreck, slow to clear, which gives you plenty of time to watch a family from New York struggle to put their toddler on the back of an elk. Your gas tank is nearly empty, someone’s bladder nearly full.

Finally pulling into a trash-strewn parking lot, you discover the unkempt bathrooms are biohazardous.

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There are no smiling flat hats in sight. No maintenance personnel. No reenactors demonstrating blacksmithing or quilting or that ol’ mountain music which for centuries has wafted through these hollers and hills. No one to tell your kids the history of these people, of this place, of this nation.

As the hazy summer sun threatens to dip beneath the lush, green peaks above, you head down an overgrown trail worn to obsolescence, crisscrossed with fallen trees. Passing a campsite near a historic wooden cabin given to rot, you catch the acrid smell of plastic burning in a campfire, enveloping campers pounding beers and poaching hellbenders. Further into the woods, stepping over a discarded campaign yard sign, you roll your ankle on a lichen-slicked rock. It’s growing ever darker. No one is coming to help you. And on top of it all, you still had to pay $5 to park.

Your experience could serve as an accurate description of the state of any number of the county’s 63 National Parks — understaffed and underfunded for generations — if further cuts to staffing promulgated by President Donald Trump and his advisor Elon Musk hold true.

“Back in 2010, the annual appropriations for all of the parks around the country was $3.1 billion,” said Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, a 3,200-member organization comprised mainly of current and former National Parks Service employees. “The House bill last year was calling for $3.1 billion, and if you look at the adjustment of $3.1 billion over 15 years, it should be $4.6 billion, just to keep even.”

Phil Francis. File photo

While earning $1.65 an hour working in a textile mill, Francis lucked into a position at King’s Mountain National Military Park about 20 miles west of Charlotte. The job entailed giving walk-and-talks, working the information desk, maybe hiking some trails. It paid $3 an hour.

“That’s how I got started,” Francis said. “After one month had passed, I was in love with it. And after a couple of years of doing it while I was in college, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Initially hesitant about his public speaking skills, Francis grew into an enthusiastic educator.

“I was dressed in 18th-century clothing with a Kentucky rifle. Kids would come running down the trail, all excited that they were there, and then all of a sudden they would come to a screeching halt and everybody would point toward us and say, ‘Wow, look!’ They would come over, and we would tell them about the American Revolution and the Battle of Kings Mountain,” Francis said. “You’re talking about the history of our country.”

Francis retired in 2013 after a 41-year career with the National Park Service, including stints on some of America’s most hallowed ground. Chickamauga. Shenandoah. Yosemite. He spent 11 years as deputy superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including three years as acting superintendent, and also served as superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway beginning in 2005.

Dubbed the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” on Feb. 14, the Trump administration terminated approximately 1,000 National Park Service employees. A subsequent email obtained by The Smoky Mountain News from National Park Service leadership to all NPS employees provides guidance on how they should address the firings if they’re asked, by anyone.

“Please use this statement and only this statement. ‘I am not able to share that information at this time.’ This is the only statement that anyone should use,” the email, sent Feb. 19, reads. “Please do not deviate from this language even if you need to repeat it multiple times.”

The layoffs were part of a larger, ongoing, error-plagued effort to look for waste, fraud and inefficiency in all quarters of the nation’s $6.2 trillion annual budget and will affect various NPS roles, including maintenance workers, scientists and educational staff.

“The natural resources of the parks are still going to be present, but it’s going to be hard to maintain the trails. It’s going to be hard to keep restrooms open and clean. It’s going to be hard to have people on board to operate campgrounds and picnic areas. If there’s problems along the highway, we’ve always had law enforcement rangers and even volunteers who drive the roads to make sure everybody is safe and if something happens, they can report it and we can respond,” Francis said. “That may be more difficult to do now, and that’s too bad, because one of the images that we’ve projected over the years is the smiling face of a ranger in a flat hat.”

Since 2010, Francis said, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has lost about 20% of its staff, and the Blue Ridge Parkway has lost 25% of its staff, mainly due to the unwillingness of Congress to fund fully the National Park System.

“You look at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or the Blue Ridge Parkway, it’s just a small fraction of the total Park Service budget, and the total Park Service budget is only one-sixteenth of 1% of the federal budget,” Francis said. “Surely you can’t be cutting a part of one-sixteenth of 1% thinking you’re going to balance our country’s budget.”

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-Henderson) represents the entirety of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina side, but has repeatedly refused to talk to The Smoky Mountain News about the funding issue, including in 2023 when the Park had little other choice than to pass the cost of deferred maintenance on to you, the visitor — by implementing a new parking fee system.

Originally from Stone Mountain, Georgia, Laurey Faye Dean spent decades as a production potter operating within the region’s storied folk art movement. Last winter, the effusive, well-spoken Dean was looking around for something else to do that fit her personality and her love of art and nature. 

Laurey Faye Dean. File photo

“There was an interpretive ranger position open at the National Park Service,” Dean said Feb. 19. “I applied for it, and after background checks almighty on me, just all the kinds of things that you have to do to work for the Park Service, I was hired. It was a great experience, talking with people, leading hikes, telling kids about elk, keeping elk and people away from each other, reminding people not to climb on the waterfalls.”

Her job at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center was full-time, albeit seasonal. It had been an eventful, yet productive, first season for Dean.

“When I’d been in the park before, I’d always been a visitor. I’d been a hiker, a camper. So here I am wearing a radio. There’s car chases, there’s accidents, oh my gosh, there was stuff happening every single day. People falling off waterfalls, three, four or five times a day. I had no idea,” she said. “Our visiting public doesn’t know all that is going on, because we want them to have a good experience. They don’t need to know all that. That doesn’t mean all that’s not happening, right?”

In addition to her daily duties, she’d become instrumental in reviving the old-time music jam that had languished somewhat since the Coronavirus Pandemic. After Hurricane Helene, she and others had to face off against semi-trucks unlawfully utilizing the park’s serpentine thoroughfare, U.S. Route 441, in lieu of the damaged Interstate 40.

“We were just walking out in the road in front of 18-wheelers, going, ‘Stop!’”

Dean’s last scheduled day of work was Dec. 28, 2024, but she’d already applied and been accepted to come back and work again this summer.

“Even bought a new pair of boots,” Dean said.

Less than a month after her last day, on Jan. 23 — three days after Trump’s Inauguration — she received an email telling her that she wasn’t welcome back.

“Rescinding offer of employment for park ranger interpretation with the National Park Service: please be advised, as the National Park Service is unable to fill the park ranger interpretation GS-7 position at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Cherokee, North Carolina, at this time, as such, your job offer has been rescinded at management request,” she said, reading the email.

“I felt profound sadness, because I really was giving that job the best of me,” Dean continued. “I also started feeling fear for the repercussions, not just on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park but on all the parks. I saw that having boots on the ground, people smiling, people directing traffic, people interacting with other people, is vital to making the parks work.”

Repercussions stemming from the physical and interpersonal diminishment of the Park won’t just affect the Park. They’ll also affect the gateway communities around them. 

Some in the Smokies, like Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, have built up sufficient tourism infrastructure to weather the decline of the Park, should that be fated.

Others, like Maggie Valley, Townsend, Waynesville and Wears Valley, have not.

For communities that depend on America’s national parks to drive the region’s tourism-heavy economy, even minor decreases in visitation create ever-growing concentric circles of commercial calamity across other economic sectors, like a cinder block in a koi pond.

Systemwide, 325 million visits in 2023 resulted in $26.4 billion in associated spending — nearly double the amount in 2012 — that was directly responsible for 415,000 jobs.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s most recent annual economic effects report, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park logged 13.3 million visits in 2023, its second-highest total after COVID-weary urbanites visited 14 million times in 2021.

In 2023, visitors spent more than $2.2 billion at bars, restaurants, hotels, gas stations, outfitters, trinket shops and the like, with only 4.8% of that coming from locals. The spending supported 33,000 jobs regionally.

Maintenance of Park infrastructure includes everything up to and including signage. NPS photo

Western North Carolina, Haywood County specifically, is fortunate to be one of few places that has two major sites managed by the National Park Service. The Blue Ridge Parkway, a meandering 469-mile scenic drive, links Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.

Portions of the Parkway remain closed due to damage wrought by Helene, but when it’s open, the Parkway is an even bigger attraction than the 816 square-mile park it at times borders.

In 2023, the Parkway saw more visits than at any time since 2007, 16.7 million, which resulted in visitor spending of nearly $1.4 billion in small communities from Cumberland Knob to Cherokee.

Industry literature on the impact of outdoor recreational spending in North Carolina suggests outdoor enthusiasts spend more and stay longer than the average visitor, and that two of the top four reasons people want to visit — maybe after seeing an ad on the television or in a dog-eared magazine at the barber shop — involve outdoor recreation.

“Scenic beauty from the mountains to the coast has long been a strong suit in North Carolina’s appeal to travelers,” said Wit Tuttell, Visit NC’s executive director. “Our research shows hiking, wildlife viewing and other outdoor pursuits among the most popular activities for our visitors. With mountain destinations recovering from damage and economic setbacks from Hurricane Helene, restoration of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Cataloochee and the recreation areas in our national forests is crucial to the vitality of the tourism industry, a major force in the local and state economies. Given the volume of visitors during the summer, a cutback in services could compound the economic challenges.”

Sales tax collections statistics from the North Carolina Department of Commerce reinforce Tuttell’s assertions (see HELENE, p. 4). For September and October 2024, the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, taxable spending dropped nearly $400 million in the state’s 28 westernmost counties and occupancy rates tanked right at the start of the busy fall leaf season some businesses depend on to make it through the year.

In Haywood County, population 61,000, visitors spend in excess of $75 million each year on lodging alone, accounting for roughly $3 million in room occupancy tax collections each year.

The HCTDA collects the 4% tax from lodging establishments each month and is mandated to spend two-thirds of the money on marketing and one-third on tourism infrastructure — local projects that put heads in beds and also benefit locals (see TDA, p. 6). Those projects can be anything from events like Canton’s Labor Day Festival to physical improvements like the Dahlia Ridge Trail at Haywood Community College to colorful murals, like the ones that adorn Waynesville Soda Jerks and BearWaters Brewing.

“Tourism is a massive piece of Haywood County’s economy, and frankly, all of Western North Carolina’s economy,” said Corrina Ruffieux, executive director of the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority. “With the loss of the paper mill a few years ago, we don’t have any large industry here. It’s been shown time and time again through the Visit NC research that tourism is our number one employer by far here in Haywood County, so we definitely want to do absolutely everything we can to keep that tourism economy rolling forward.”

Corrina Ruffieux. File photo

The HCTDA’s most recent master plan, completed substantially last year but issued with amendments due to the ongoing impact of Helene, envisions the organization as more than just a tax collector and rather as a steward for the resources that create visitation. The plan also calls for diversifying outdoor and indoor attractions while pushing to become a four-season destination to generate additional tourist spending that can either augment park-related revenue or act as a hedge against potential decreases in park-related spending.

It’s a similar tack taken with another master plan approved by another public body in 2022.

“I remember I had seen in The Smoky Mountain News there was an ad that Jackson County had paid for, a full-page ad and it described the economic effects of outdoor recreation in Jackson County — fishing, tubing, kayaking, hiking, all of those things. It was in the high $300-million in revenue directly related to outdoor recreation from the surrounding national parks, national forests and their own natural resources within the county,” said Kevin FitzGerald, chair of the Haywood County Recreation Advisory Board. “I’m like, ‘Why are we letting all these people drive past us to Jackson County?’”

FitzGerald, however, isn’t just the chair of that board or a beloved local high school track and cross country coach. He started off in the National Park Service in 1978 as a fee collector at Crabtree Meadows on the Parkway, worked in Cataloochee, moved on to the Everglades, then the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and Cape Cod National Seashore. He managed the first post-9/11 Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall before becoming regional chief ranger in the Rockies and then followed Phil Francis as deputy superintendent of the Smokies for eight years until retiring in 2013.

His recreation advisory board crafted their master plan not only with an eye on improving county recreational facilities and offerings, but also on better leveraging the federal lands that surround Haywood County’s municipalities. If those lands become compromised, the hyperlocal economy will also be affected.

Kevin FitzGerald. File photo

“Every superintendent right now has probably gotten direction from a regional director or from Washington telling them to make plans to deal with reduced staffing or with the shutdown, because that’s looming too — another shutdown,” he said. In 2018 and 2019, the longest, costliest federal shutdown in history affected operations at national parks, including the Smokies. The effects are consistent with what happens when superintendents are forced to make due with less. A Congressional showdown over a spending bill will result in a shutdown if a deal isn’t reached by March 14.

“The smart thing would be to close areas so you can contract your resources into high-use areas and unfortunately, that’s what likely would happen to a place like Haywood County,” FitzGerald said. “Cataloochee would probably be closed, I would guess Deep Creek might have to be closed, 20 Mile might have to be closed so the big three — Oconaluftee, Sugarlands and Cade’s Cove — remain open.”

Despite the grim outlook, Laurey Faye Dean says she’s still been involved at Oconaluftee. 

“I’ve been going down to the Park and playing with musicians occasionally, just to keep the excitement,” Dean said. “I very badly play clawhammer banjo.”

After she spoke to The Smoky Mountain News on Feb. 19, Dean said she’d heard that she may indeed get her job back, which is something she said she wants very much. As of press time on Feb. 24, she hasn’t received official word. With the raft of false information that continues to trickle out of Washington, seeing is believing.

Reports last week that Trump plans to rehire some terminated employees are encouraging; however, the damage may have already been done.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park creates an immense amount of visitor spending each year. NPS photo

“You have to go through a process that takes time,” he said. “Largely, background investigations are trying to determine whether you can be blackmailed, and a criminal history check, driver’s history check, that’s what it takes but it takes time, it takes money to do that.”

Seasonal hires like Dean are usually planned months before they begin work. Some who were terminated may have already found new jobs.

“A lot of people don’t realize that the vast majority of people who work for the National Park Service, unlike a lot of other federal agencies, have advanced degrees, so you’re hiring people who have at least a degree, or master’s degrees, in some cases PhDs, for $15 an hour,” FitzGerald said. “I mean, that’s less than what they could make at Chick-fil-A.”

Others may have left the areas where they worked. Dean lives in Haywood County, so if she’s rehired, she doesn’t have to worry about finding housing near her work assignment, but those not so fortunate would find themselves struggling to find affordable housing — another national problem — before they could commit to the job.

Then, there’s the overall disruption in continuity; many of the terminated employees were only just beginning their careers in the National Park Service like FitzGerald and Francis did decades ago. The next generation of rangers, superintendents and regional administrators may now be soured on federal service.

“You know, we’re supposed to protect this stuff for future generations, not just for our generation,” FitzGerald said. “Those are the trickle-down effects that happen when there’s a shuffling of duties.”

Francis lamented the state of affairs, and the state of the parks, but mostly the state of division.

“These parks are owned by all of us, regardless of your political persuasion. It’s the story of our country that we all own and are part of,” he said. “I don’t know, I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense to me. National parks are a great way of pulling people together, not pushing them apart.”