Study: Great Smoky Mountains' $800 million in visitor spending tops among national parks

A National Park Service study has ranked the Great Smoky Mountains as tops in visitor spending.

The study estimates the Smokies' 9 million visitors in 2008 spent more than $800 million on lodging, fuel, food, gifts and amusements in the park's gateway communities, including Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Cherokee, N.C.

That's nearly twice as much as the $423 million spent by visitors to Arizona's Grand Canyon, which finished second behind the Smokies in a review of the park service's 391 units.

It also means that each visitor to the Smokies is worth, on average, about $88 to the local economy.

The study said that level of spending supports some 14,569 jobs in Smokies communities.

"Over 75 years ago when community leaders in Tennessee and North Carolina sought to create this national park some were striving to preserve the last vestiges of old growth forest in the Southeast," Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said in a statement Wednesday.

"Many others saw that a national park in the Southern Appalachians could become a powerful magnet to attract tourists who would contribute to the local economy.

"Fortunately, both interests got what they wanted," he said.

Early Smokies planners recognized that nearly all the infrastructure to serve visitors could be developed outside the park, Ditmanson said.

"By choosing not to build hotels, restaurants, gas stations and the like inside the park, we have been able to minimize the impact of those facilities on the park while maximizing the opportunity for local communities to offer whatever goods and service visitors might want or need," he said.

The study by Daniel Stynes of Michigan State University provides a breakdown of each park unit's visitation, visitor spending and local jobs supported.

Joining the Smokies and Grand Canyon in the top five for visitor spending are Yellowstone in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho at $345 million, the Blue Ridge Parkway of Virginia and North Carolina at $342 million and California's Yosemite at $292 million.

The study said the Smokies' 342 employees had the fifth highest payroll _ $14.9 million _ in the system in 2008. Yellowstone was first with $23.9 million.