GSMNP the most popular park
USA Today Yeah, Cades Cove is worth a visit but the traffic jam makes YNP roads look like wide open freeways. On a Thursday it took me hours (no exaggeration) to get to the mill area.
Forum Discussion
I have always thought those figures were a bit misleading. Great Smoky has several roads that transit the park. There is a lot of traffic that is counted as visitations that are probably commuters or people who are transiting the park to get to the attractions and cities that are adjacent to the park (i.e Dollywood, Gatlinburg, Ashville). Combine that with the huge numbers of people who live within a few hours of the park, the visitation numbers at GSMNP is just different than the visitation number of parks like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier. Regardless, GSMNP is a heck of a national treasure.
