Hikers Rejoice As Clingmans Dome Tower Rehabilitation Project Suspended for Winter

Hikers Rejoice As Clingmans Dome Tower Rehabilitation Project Suspended for Winter. Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials announced that the Clingmans Dome Observation Tower has been reopened to the public. The rehabilitation work has been suspended for the winter and is expected to resume this Spring. The remaining work is expected to take approximately two weeks and will necessitate another short-term closure to complete.

Visitors can enjoy views from the tower throughout the winter, however, the Clingmans Dome Road will be inaccessible to motorists from December 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018 due to normal seasonal closures. The road, tower, and entire Clingmans Dome area remain accessible to hikers throughout the winter.

Much of the needed rehabilitation work was completed last Fall, but the final surface overlay still needs to be completed. Deteriorated areas on the concrete columns and walls have been repaired, support walls have been stabilized at the base of the ramp, and stone masonry has been repaired.

The work has been made possible through funding received from a Partners in Preservation (PIP) grant. The $ 250,000 grant was awarded last summer to the Friends of the Smokies on behalf of the park after being one of the top nine, most voted for parks in the Partners in Preservation: National Parks Campaign in 2016.

Straddling the North Carolina and Tennessee state line at 6,643 feet, the tower is a prominent landmark and destination as the highest point in the park. The observation tower is a precedent-setting design of the National Park Service’s Mission 66 program, which transformed park planning, management, and architecture and fundamentally altered the visitor experience in national parks. Since 1959, millions of visitors have climbed the tower, where they can see distances of up to 100 miles over the surrounding mountains and valleys. Some minimal preservation work today on the tower will ensure that visitors continue to experience this unique structure spiraling up from the highest point in the park.

Partners in Preservation is a program in which American Express, in partnership with

the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awards preservation grants to historic places across the country. Since 2006, Partners in Preservation, a community-based partnership, has committed $16 million in preservation funding to nearly 200 diverse sites in eight different cities across the country.

Through this partnership, American Express, National Geographic, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation seek to increase the public’s awareness of the importance of historic preservation in the United States and to preserve America’s historic and cultural places. The program also hopes to inspire long-term support from local citizens for the historic places at the heart of their communities.