The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has awarded a contract for construction of a bridge on the Foothills Parkway.Park officials said Thursday an American Recovery and Reinvestment grant will pay for the $24.7 million project, awarded to Bell & Associates Highway Construction of Brentwood.
The contract is to design and construct an 800 foot-long bridge (No. 2) on the eastern end of the unfinished Wears Valley-to-Walland segment of the Parkway, known as the "missing link," in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
When completed, bridge No. 2 will be a curving, elevated roadway that will be supported by four up-to-100-foot-tall piers. The road will cross two ravines on the south slope of Chilhowee Mountain. It is the longest single bridge needed to complete the missing link.
Work on the new bridge should begin in March and is scheduled for completion in November 2011.
"Many people are familiar with the iconic Linn Cove Viaduct that carries the Blue Ridge Parkway around Grandfather Mountain." GSNP Superintendent Dale A. Ditmanson said. "This new bridge is very nearly as long as that structure and likely to become just as noteworthy."
Proposed in the 1920s, authorized by Congress in 1944 and intermittently funded, the proposed 72-mile parkway is roughly half completed, and not all of that is joined.
Roughly 22 miles are currently open to traffic.
Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, hiking gear store, and more.
Hiking Tours