A design has been finalized for a new $3 million visitor center at the North Carolina entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park outside Cherokee.

The new visitor center will focus on the cultural history of the park, from early Native Americans to Appalachian heritage. The park has thousands of artifacts collected from people who once lived in the park, but they are locked up in storage since the park has nowhere to display them. The new visitor center will finally put the public in touch with some of these implements of early life, from spinning wheels to farm tools to moonshine stills.

“We are going to be using those artifacts to tell the story of the people who lived here,” said Kent Cave, a park ranger who supervises visitor outreach with a specialty in Appalachian studies. “This is a fulfillment of a dream and of a promise.”

Cave said the original plan for the park dating back to the 1940s called for a cultural heritage museum on the N.C. side of the park, while the visitor center on the TN side focuses on ecology and natural history of the Smokies.

The cultural heritage theme will dovetail with the Mountain Farm Museum already in place at Occonaluftee, where visitors can see old farm buildings and demonstrations of early life.

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