Road to Nowhere

Just outside Bryson City, inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is a road named Lakeview Drive. If you follow it, it will lead you to a dead end at a tunnel – an unfinished project from the 1940s that was promised after Swain County gave up much of its private land to the federal government to create Fontana Lake and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The construction of this new road to replace the highway that was promised by the National Park Service came to a halt after encountering some environmental issues and was never finished. Today, you can hike the 3.2-mile loop that passes under the bridge and by Fontana Lake, wild boar traps and abandoned homesteads left by relocated families.