The Aroostine Higgins Series by Melissa F. Miller

Author:Melissa F. Miller [Miller, Melissa F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Street Books

2

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The present day

* * *

Kurt Jenson removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. The rows and rows of budgetary numbers swam before his eyes. He squeezed them shut for a moment and hoped for a miracle. But when he reopened his eyes and returned his glasses to his face, the numbers were still there. It didn’t matter how long he looked at them. The figures were not magically going to add up. As usual, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s annual operating expenses far exceeded its budget.

Kurt sighed heavily and flopped against his chair. It was a recurring problem that had only become increasingly dire as the park had grown in popularity. Now one of the busiest in the nation, it still was hampered by its woefully insufficient budget.

The Friends of the Park worked tirelessly to raise money, and Kurt wrung pennies from every corner of the budget, like his Depression-era grandma, who used to iron her wrapping paper for reuse. But the facts were what they were: He couldn’t stretch the budget far enough to adequately serve the millions of visitors who poured through the gates.

The entrance gates.

Kurt gritted his teeth in frustration. There was an easy solution, one that helped many of the national parks throughout the system stay on their feet. But it wasn’t available to him. Thanks to a quirk of law, dating back to the 1930s, The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was forbidden from charging an entrance fee or a parking fee.

He had no way to recoup any money from the visitors—now averaging approximately a million each month—who benefited from the park. He was held hostage by the Tennessee state legislature. Newfound Gap Road, the only road running north to south through his park, had originally been a joint construction project between Tennessee and North Carolina, paid for by the states and their local governmental entities.

When the National Park Service went to the two states and asked them to deed over Newfound Gap Road as part of the planned park, North Carolina handed off its portions of the road with no restrictions. But Tennessee included a deed restriction that provided that the federal government would never impose a “toll or license fee” to travel on the roadway. And for the past ninety-odd years, that had been that.

It would take an act of the Tennessee state legislature to lift the deed restriction and enable the park to charge an entrance fee. And Tennessee had told every park superintendent who’d asked to go pound salt, Kurt among them. What was most aggravating about the mess was that he’d had countless meetings with both the Tennessee and North Carolina legislators whose districts abutted the park. And they both agreed privately that the inability to charge a fee hampered their shared jewel, the lure that drew all the tourists to Gatlinburg and Cherokee in the first place.

But publicly both politicians tucked their tails between their soft, governmental behinds and promised the voters what they wanted to hear: the park would always be free.

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