A paved path to an eighty-foot falls, and the park’s most-walked trail
Laurel Falls is the waterfall most first-time visitors to the Smokies see, and there are good reasons. The trailhead sits on Little River Road about three miles west of Sugarlands Visitor Center, so it’s minutes into the park from Gatlinburg. The walk is 1.3 miles each way on a paved path, 2.6 miles round trip, climbing steadily through shaded hardwood forest thick with mountain laurel and rhododendron. At the end, Laurel Branch drops 80 feet over two rocky tiers split by a natural ledge, and the path crosses the stream between them.
The trail itself is a piece of park history. It was built in the early 1930s so fire crews could reach a lookout tower on Cove Mountain. By the early 1960s it was so popular that the first 1.3 miles, trailhead to falls, were graded and paved with asphalt to stop the erosion. That pavement is why the walk is so easy to follow, and why the park has had to keep patching it.
The NPS counts more than 300,000 hikers a year here, and more than 375,000 in 2020 alone. That’s the whole story of Laurel Falls: an easy, beautiful walk that almost everyone in Gatlinburg has heard of.
Before you go: the closure, the parking and the early start
It’s closed for now, so check before you plan. The NPS closed Laurel Falls Trail for a major rehabilitation: the old asphalt torn out, the path repaved and widened, retaining walls rebuilt, new viewing platforms and a wider bridge at the falls, new signs on bear safety and Leave No Trace, and about 50 extra parking spaces with a guarded walkway to the trailhead. Crews hit unexpected ground conditions while building the lower viewing platform, and the park pushed the reopening back; at our last check it expected to reopen the trail sometime in 2027. The closure runs from the Little River Road trailhead up to the junction with the Little Greenbrier and Cove Mountain trails, so you can’t reach the falls from above either. Until the NPS Current Cautions and Closures page lists the trail as open, treat everything below as planning for a later trip.
Expect new parking rules when it reopens. The park’s management plan for the trail includes a timed-entry parking reservation system for the trailhead lots at peak periods, and possibly a shuttle. When the plan was approved, the NPS said it had no timeline for the reservation system. So check the current NPS rules for Laurel Falls before you go: whether a reservation is needed that day, and whether the NPS recommends one of its authorized shuttle companies.
Buy the parking tag. There’s no entry fee, but any car parked in the park for more than 15 minutes needs a parking tag (daily, weekly or annual), sold online and at visitor centers; most trailheads have no tag machine. A tag doesn’t guarantee a space.
Go early, and on a weekday. Before the rehab the trailhead had only about 39 designated spaces, shared with the Sugarland Mountain Trail, and demand regularly outstripped them. People used to park along Little River Road for up to half a mile and walk the shoulder. The park has since lined that stretch with boulders, guardrails and fencing. The NPS’s own page says the lots are often full. Arrive early, and if the lot is full, go to another trail rather than circling.
The trade-offs: crowds, slick rock, bears and who should skip it
It’s paved, but not wheelchair-accessible. The pavement makes it look like an accessible trail, and it isn’t. Grades run from gentle to about 16% in places, the climb to the falls is nearly 300 feet, and the old surface was cracked and uneven. The NPS looked at easing the grades during the redesign and found the terrain limits how far they can be reduced in several places, and the trail isn’t on the park’s list of trails for mobility devices. If you need an accessible falls, Cataract Falls is on that list.
The falls are the dangerous part. The rock around Laurel Falls is wet and slippery, with steep drop-offs, and the NPS notes that slips and falls commonly happen where visitors stand on the bedrock to look at the water. Visitors who slipped there have needed emergency medical help from park staff. Stay on the path and the viewing areas, keep kids by the hand at the crossing, and don’t climb on the ledges for a photo.
Bears come for the food people leave. The park calls this trail a hotspot for bear encounters, mostly because of visitors’ food and trash. Pack out every crumb. Getting within 50 yards (150 feet) of a bear, or any distance that disturbs it, is illegal. If one changes its behavior because of you, you’re too close: back away slowly, facing it, and never run.
Who should skip it: hikers who want quiet or a real workout, and anyone with only one morning who can’t get to the trailhead early. You’ll share the path with a lot of people, and dogs aren’t allowed. On a busy day the forest and the falls are still lovely, but it won’t feel like the backcountry.
