Road to Nowhere

The End of the Road to Nowhere, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

When the Fontana Dam was completed in 1944, North Carolina State Road 288 was inundated, and several communities along the Little Tennessee and Tuckasegee rivers were abandoned either because of flooding or because they were no longer accessible by road. The federal government agreed that the National Park Service would rebuild SR 288 along the north shore of Fontana Lake, but by the early ’70s, only about 7 miles had been completed and construction was halted because of the “environmental impact.” (Never mind the environmental impact of putting up a 480-foot dam which flooded some 10,000+ acres of land, creating the need for a new road to start with.)