Welcome to the North Shore Road EIS Website

FEIS Available for Viewing
Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) has completed the North Shore Road Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) announcing a Monetary Settlement to Swain County as the National Park Service (NPS) Preferred Alternative. Click here to view the FEIS.

Click here to view the Notice of Availability (NOA) published in the Federal Register.

History
The North Shore Road Project has a long history, spanning over six decades. In July 1943, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), the state of North Carolina, and Swain County, North Carolina, entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (1943 Agreement) that dealt with the creation of Fontana Dam and Reservoir and the resultant flooding of lands and roads within Swain County. The 1943 Agreement contained a provision by which the DOI was to construct a road through GSMNP, along the north shore of the newly formed Fontana Reservoir, to replace the flooded NC 288.

The obligation of the DOI to construct the road was subject to and contingent on an appropriation by Congress of all funds necessary for the road's construction. The United States was at war when the 1943 Agreement was executed, and no funds were appropriated for construction. After the war, between 1948 and 1970, the DOI, through the NPS, built 7.2 miles (11.6 kilometers [km]) of the proposed road. (Approximately 30 miles [48.3 km] have not been constructed.) In October 2000, Congress budgeted $16 million of Department of Transportation (DOT) appropriations to resume construction of the North Shore Road in GSMNP.

The NPS has prepared the EIS to analyze alternatives for resolving issues related to the North Shore Road . The purpose of the proposed action is to discharge and satisfy any obligations on the part of the United States that presently exist as the result of the 1943 Agreement. The agencies see the recent funding, and the planning process this action triggers, as an opportunity to resolve long, outstanding issues and enhance working relationships between GSMNP and the Park's gateway neighbors in Bryson City and Swain County, North Carolina.