In the banquet that is our national parks, the Great Smoky Mountains is the casserole—less thrilling but more filling than more glamorous offerings. Established as an economic engine for a depressed region, the Smokies generates more local jobs and dollars and serves far more visitors than any other national park. And, like most casseroles, the Smokies is both created and bound by tradition.

One tradition is its fourth-place funding status behind Western counterparts Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks; Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson admits he would like to "do a little catch-up." But since the 1980s, all national parks have suffered faltering federal support. State Supreme Court Justice Gary Wade considered it "a last-resort measure" when, in 1993, then-Superintendent Randall Pope asked him to establish Friends of the Smokies. That organization has to date raised $20 million, but the park still fights an $11.5 million operations shortfall annually and a $180 million maintenance backlog. While the government "basically meets payroll," Wade says, the private sector funds about 28% of required capital expenses.

Ditmanson sees new promise in President Bush's proposed 2007-08 National Parks Service appropriations, which would add $1.9 million to the Smokies' $16 million budget, as well as in the administration's "Centennial Initiative," which proposes $3 billion in new public/private investment in NPS by 2016. "They're recognizing you can't move ahead every year if you take a step back," Ditmanson says. But with federal discretionary dollars perennially scarce, Wade predicts the Smokies will never be responsibly funded without substantial, continuing private-sector support.

One solution is stymied by another tradition: The Smokies is the only major park without an entrance fee, a status evolved from the government's decades-old promise not to charge a toll on two primary park thoroughfares. A modest fee could be established through legislation, and Ditmanson acknowledges that the resulting $10 million or so a year would significantly offset the park's operating shortfall without deterring visitors. But the park won't propose a fee, he says, because of long-held local sentiment against it. Vicki Simms, executive director of the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce, says while her city has stepped up support for the Smokies, the park's open gates reflect a debt to the communities that helped finance it in 1934. "It was a noble beginning, and it's something that this national park just has to accept. [A fee] really isn't up for debate."

In 2009, the Smokies will turn 75, celebrated by the people it feeds. Retiring that debt might be the perfect gift.