ROAD TO THE SUGARLANDS
The roads that wind through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park follow the old footpaths of America’s indigenous people. Even after 14,000 years, the quickest way to get through the mountains is via one of these walking trails—the one that came to be called “Newfound Gap Road.”
The most popular entrance to the park is on this road, in Gatlinburg, with its moonshine distilleries and pancake houses and Space Needle. It’s an Appalachian Vegas Strip, minus the gambling but double the whiskey.
The vast majority of the park’s 11 million annual visitors funnel their way in on Newfound Gap Road, stopping only to snap photos of panoramic mountainscapes and strings of cloud wisping up toward the heavens,
