Date: May 24, 2007
Contact: Nancy Gray, (865) 436-1208

Due to technical difficulties, advanced campground reservations to National Park Service areas are currently unavailable through the National Recreation Reservation System website or its telephone call center. As a result, new advance reservations at Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s three reservation campgrounds—Cades Cove, Elkmont and Smokemont—and all group campsites, horse camps, and picnic pavilions in the Park are also unavailable until the federal-contract reservation program resumes its services.

"Reservations already made at the Park’s three campgrounds or other reserved facilities are valid," said Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson. "We will do our best, under the circumstances, to provide the best customer service possible during this interruption."

At this time, all of the Park’s 10 developed campgrounds, including Cades Cove and Elkmont in Tennessee and Smokemont in North Carolina, will offer sites on a first-come, first serve walk-in basis during the disruption in the reservation system. There will be no opportunity to make telephone reservations during this "downtime".

Because of their popularity, the three campgrounds normally on the reservation system are already booked for the Memorial Day holiday. The other seven self-registration campgrounds are Cosby, Look Rock, and Abrams Creek in Tennessee and Balsam Mountain, Deep Creek, Big Creek, and Cataloochee in North Carolina. Park managers say that while the smaller of these campgrounds will fill first during the Memorial Day holiday period, campsites most likely will be available longer at the two larger campgrounds at Cosby and Look Rock.

Visitors who wish to make an advance reservation during the shutdown for a group campsite, horse camp, or picnic pavilion will be required to go in person to Elkmont, Cades Cove, or Smokemont campgrounds. Those facilities are unable to process reservations by telephone.

"Unfortunately, we do not have the capability to override the system and create a better way to deal with reservations at Park sites. We know that this will cause an inconvenience to some of our visitors, and hope that the deficiencies in the National Recreation Reservation System will be corrected quickly, but at this time we have no indication of when that will be," said Ditmanson. Visitors can check the NRRS website, www.recreation.gov, to determine when reservations will resume.