The road? It sits as it has existed for decades, seven miles of completed road in the middle of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A $52 million dollar settlement was reached with the Department of the Interior, North Carolina and Swain County.
That’s as far as it got as environmental issues stopped construction dead in its tracks.
Fast-forward 30 years to the 1970’s, and… a 7-mile portion of the road had been built. To placate the communities that had to be relocated during dam and lake construction, the federal government proposed a new 30-mile road from Bryson City to Fontana through the new Great Smoky Mountains National Park. What do you call a $52 million dollar dead-end in Bryson City, NC? Step into our “Way-Back” machine, way back to the 1940’s when the Tennessee Valley Authority built the Fontana Dam and Fontana Lake along the Little Tennessee River. We also are home to a variety of obscure, strange and inexplicable features that offer wonderfully weird and wacky things to do in Western NC. In this space, we have successfully blended agriculture, technology, arts, cultural and higher education centers, and a host of culinary experiences ranging from backyard barbecue to high-end dining.
Our vast size is comparable in size to the state of Massachusetts, which almost makes us a state within a state, and offers an incredibly diverse area of 3 distinct mountain ranges: high country, foothills and valleys. Wildberry Lodge and our greater Asheville area are part of the region known as Western North Carolina (WNC), which spans nearly 11,000 square miles.