About Wears Valley Overlook (Foothills Parkway)
The Missing Link was the last piece of the Foothills Parkway's western section, finished in 2018 after more than fifty years. It joins Walland to Wears Valley across a ridge, and the pull-offs at its Wears Valley end look straight down into the valley.
The view
Wears Valley is a broad, flat-floored basin, a Y-shaped cove with farms and chalets scattered through it. Beyond it, Cove Mountain and the main Smokies ridgeline rise in layers. In clear autumn air the near ridges are green and brown and the far ones blue. At dusk, lights come on in the valley and the sky above the mountains turns orange.
The pull-off is wide and new, one of the better-built along the Parkway, with clean sightlines.
Visiting
- Where: at the Wears Valley end of the Missing Link, reached from Wears Valley Road (US-321) at the Parkway entrance or from Walland.
- Time to allow: 10 to 15 minutes.
- Facilities: none. Wears Valley has restaurants and stores, Townsend has more.
- Road: a two-lane Parkway with 45 mph limit. Cyclists share it on weekends.
- Season: open year-round, but ice closes sections in winter. See the NPS Foothills Parkway page and the conditions page.
Why come
If you are staying in Wears Valley or Pigeon Forge, this is the quickest way to get above the traffic. The Parkway is quieter than anything in the national park proper, and you can make a loop with Townsend and Cades Cove (which has its own vehicle-free Wednesdays in season).
The unbuilt stretch of the Parkway from Wears Valley to Cosby is not planned, so this is the eastern end of the western section.
Good to know
- Do I need a parking tag?
- A Park It Forward parking tag ($5 a day, $15 a week or $40 a year) is required for any vehicle parked more than 15 minutes inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Entry is free, and federal passes such as America the Beautiful do not replace the tag.