Getting to Great Smoky Mountains National Park
By Car
There are numerous road entrances to the park. The two most common lie at either end of Newfound Gap Road (US-441), at the cities of Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Cherokee, North Carolina. Exit 407 from I-40 leads to the Gatlinburg side. Additional entrances are at Deep Creek, Townsend, Big Creek, Balsam Mountain, and several others. Study the map for details.
Below you will find an interactive map showing the location of four of the most used entrances to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can click on the map marker to get directions from wherever you are. Following this is the official park map provided by the National Park Service. You can view either the original PDF file (sometimes very large files) or a simple image file. The map links will open in a new tab. Note that while this map is useful for general navigation around the park, if you are planning to do any hiking, you should really have a proper Great Smoky Mountains Trail Map.
Great Smoky Mountains Map JPG file
Great Smoky Mountains Map PDF file
By Air
Below you will find a list of airports most convenient for a trip to Great Smoky Mountains, listed in order of distance. For each airport we give useful links for further information on the airport, as well as flight and rental car bookings. These links already have the destination airport selected for your convenience. For price searches, simply enter your origin and dates.
- Knoxville, TN (TYS): 24 miles by car to Great Smoky Mountains (Townsend entrance)
– Visit TripAdvisor for multi-site airfare search and more TYS airport information
– Visit Expedia to search all available rental cars at TYS - Asheville, NC (AVL): 58 miles by car to Great Smoky Mountains (Cherokee entrance)
– Visit TripAdvisor for multi-site airfare search and more AVL airport information
– Visit Expedia to search all available rental cars at AVL - Greenville-Spartanburg, SC (GSP): 109 miles by car to Great Smoky Mountains (Cherokee entrance)
– Visit TripAdvisor for multi-site airfare search and more GSP airport information
– Visit Expedia to search all available rental cars at GSP