By DEREK HODGES

Staff Writer

NATIONAL PARK — Great Smoky Mountains National Park spokesman Bob Miller jokingly used the phrase, “There’s gold in them thar hills,” in announcing a study released Wednesday that shows the Smokies bring in more revenue for surrounding communities than any other national park.

The report was conducted by a researcher at Michigan State University, who compiled economic information from so-called gateway communities around the 391 national park units. The study found the Smokies isn’t just the most-visited park, it’s also head and shoulders above the rest in revenue generation, bringing in more than nine million visitors and $800 million last year.

That amount is impressive on its own given the growing recession that plagued the nation throughout 2008, but seems nearly staggering when compared with other data in the report. The next-highest-grossing unit is Grand Canyon National Park, one of the best-known symbols of the park system, which brought in just more than half what the Smokies did at $423 million, Miller said. That’s followed by Yellowstone ($345 million), the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway ($342 million) and Yosemite ($292 million).

Though it’s not clear how much of the Smokies money is spent in Sevier County, it’s long been established the park is one of the top economic drivers in the area. Plenty of local officials credit it being the source of Sevier County’s popularity among tourists both as source and perpetuator.

“This park is so important to everything we do,” Pigeon Forge Mayor Keith Whaley said during recent festivities for the park’s 75th anniversary. “Thinking about the impact the park has had on the entire region and Sevier County specifically, it’s just amazing.”

Tourism, both from park visitors in the area and others, brings in about $1.5 billion annually in Sevier County, according to University of Tennessee Tourism Institute Director Steve Morse. That helps not only keep local taxes relatively low, but also gives jobs to plenty of people here. The report suggests there are 14,569 jobs in the tourism industry in the gateway communities that would not exist if the park didn’t.

Somewhat surprisingly, the park itself isn’t employing a great deal of those folks. The Smokies ranked fifth in the amount of payroll given to its employees at $14,213,000 in 2008. That’s far below Yellowstone’s $23,924,000, though that park is considerably larger than the Smokies and therefore takes more staff.

While local officials like Whaley certainly see the impact the park has, park leaders like Superintendent Dale Ditmanson are also fully aware of the benefits to surrounding communities.

“Over 75 years ago when community leaders in Tennessee and North Carolina sought to create this national park, some were striving to preserve the last vestiges of old growth forest in the Southeast. Many others saw that a national park in the Southern Appalachians could become a powerful magnet to attract tourists who would contribute to the local economy,” Ditmanson said in response to the study. “Fortunately, they both got what they wanted.”

Ditmanson points out that, unlike other park service units, officials in the Smokies opted to leave the development of support facilities like restaurants and hotels to surrounding communities.

“Early planners recognized that nearly all of the infrastructure to serve the new visitors could be developed outside the park,” he said. “By choosing not to build hotels, restaurants, gas stations and the like inside the park, we have been able to minimize the impact of those facilities on the park while maximizing the opportunity for local communities to offer whatever goods and services visitors might want or need.”

All totaled, the report indicates there were just shy of 275 million visitors to the parks in 2008, with those folks spending $11.56 billion in gateway communities. The National Park Service employs a total of 24,954 people and has a total payroll of $1.2 million.

The figures in the study were derived from a money generation model that begins with a park’s visitation, party size, length of stay and proportion of local to non-local visitors. Those statistics are combined with locally indexed cost estimates for restaurants, lodging, amusements, locally-purchased fuel and transportation, and retail spending, Miller said.

dhodges@themountainpress.com