New Visitor Center Opens On NC Side Of Smokies

Doors opened today on a brand new visitor center on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It's the first new visitor building constructed in the park since the early 1960s, and the only one built entirely from private funds.

Exhibits at the new 6,300-square-foot Oconaluftee Visitor Center focus on the people who lived and worked in the area before the National Park was created, from the Cherokee Indians to Cataloochee farmers to major lumber companies. Artifacts include an ox yoke, a hillside plow, a moonshine still, and the chair President Franklin D. Roosevelt used at the park's dedication in 1940. The new center acts as a compliment to the one on the Tennessee side, which focuses on the park's flora and fauna. The stone and wood building was constructed to blend in with historic structures and designed to be energy-efficient and sustainable.

The Great Smoky Mountains Association paid for construction of the center with money from memberships and gift sales, while the Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park picked up the tab for the interpretive information.