The most popular hike in Smoky Mountains will close until 2026, North Carolina park says

The most popular trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is closing and won’t reopen until mid-2026, according to the National Park Service.

Laurel Falls Trail attracts as many as 375,000 people annually, which is well beyond its intended capacity when pavement was added in 1963.

The historic waterfall trail, which leads to the 80-foot-high Laurel Falls, is now crumbling under foot and in need of major rehabilitation, the park says.

That task will start Jan. 6 and continue for 18 months. Plans call for widening and repaving the trail, adding guardrails and constructing a new viewing platform for Laurel Falls. Fifty new spaces will also be added in the parking lot, which is frequently full, the park says.

The changes are meant to make the trail safer and ease chronic overcrowding, officials said.

Laurel Falls Trail is a major attraction due largely to its location near a key entrance of the park, which straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. Tourists need only drive 6.7 miles southeast from the Sugarlands gateway in Tennessee to access the trail, giving them a first shot at hiking.

The earliest incarnation of the trail dates to the early 1930s, making it old enough to qualify for inclusion as an historic district in the National Register of Historic Places, the park says.

“Laurel Falls Trail was originally built to allow fire crews access to the Cove Mountain area. ... By the early 1960s, Laurel Falls had become a popular hiking destination for visitors and erosion was taking a toll on the trail,” the park says.

“As part of the 1963 Accelerated Works Projects grant to the Department of Interior, the first 1.3 miles of trail were reconditioned, graded, and paved to halt the erosion.”

The waterfall will be inaccessible until the project is complete, and Sugarland Mountain Trail and its parking lot will also be closed, park officials said.

For those planning trips to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in 2025, park officials suggest visiting other nearby trails and falls during the closure, including Cataract Falls or Hen Wallow Falls.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park attracted 13,297,647 tourists in 2023, making it the most visited of the nation’s 63 national parks.