Great Smoky Mountains National Park is expanding by hundreds of acres, NPS says
.jpg "Great Smoky Mountains National Park is making a rare expansion, adding 600 acres on the western side of the park. The last large expansion was in 2009.")
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is making a rare expansion, with more than 600 acres soon to be added to the nation’s most visited National Park.
Known as the “Oliver Tract,” the block of wilderness includes “intact forest,” ridgelines, and headwaters for several streams that contribute to The Little River, which is itself a key tourist attraction in the region.
It’s being transferred to the National Parks System by the Foothills Land Conservancy, which set out to protect a site linked to the park’s Cades Cove settlement, dating to the 1820s.
“The tract’s name reflects its previous owner, John Oliver, one of the earliest permanent European settlers in Cades Cove and a foundational figure in the region’s history,” the conservancy reported in a May 14 news release.
“Oliver family legacy remains deeply connected to the cultural identity of the Smokies, making the preservation of the property significant not only environmentally but historically.”
The land near Townsend along the park’s western border, which is becoming heavily developed due to booming tourism. Great Smoky Mountains National Park attracted 11,527,939 visitors in 2025, which is more than double the 2025 visitation at Yellowstone National Park or the Grand Canyon, the NPS says.
Protecting the 600 acres – about a 22-mile drive southwest from Gatlinburg – means park visitors won’t be seeing motels, vacation homes and parking lots as they look into the horizon.
“The Smokies are part of the identity of East Tennessee. Protecting land of this scale, in a location this important, is rare. Opportunities like this do not come around often,” conservancy Executive Director Mark Stevans said in the news release.
“One day, people will hike these ridges, experience these forests and never realize how close this land came to becoming something else. That’s the goal. That’s conservation at its best.”
The property transfer closes on June 8, and the National Park Service has not announced specifics of what will happen once the land falls under federal protection.
Great Smoky Mountains is currently 522,427 acres, “divided almost evenly between” Tennessee and North Carolina, the NPS says.
The park’s last major expansion was a purchase of 627 acres in Blount County from The Nature Conservancy in January 2009, officials said.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is bout a 150-mile drive northwest from uptown Charlotte.
This story was originally published May 24, 2026 at 8:06 AM with the headline "Great Smoky Mountains National Park is expanding by hundreds of acres, NPS says."