Vehicles heading south out of downtown Knoxville on James White Parkway have had two options since it was constructed: they can either exit on Island Home Avenue or Sevierville Pike. In the next year or so another option may be available.

This spring the city budgeted $1.7 million for more Urban Wilderness growth including $400,000 of which will be used for a new trailhead and parking area where James White Parkway ends.

Joe Walsh, Parks and Recreation director, said city leaders want the Urban Wilderness, which encompasses 50 miles of multi-use trails, nearly a dozen parks and four Civil War sites, to become a destination place. To do that, there needs to be an entrance, he said.

“If you want to market it as a national or regional destination, you need to have something like a front door so we envision (James White Parkway) being that,” he said.

The front door might mean parking, it might mean putting in restrooms or it might be a visitor center or some combination of all three, he said.

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero called the project a “signature addition” to the Urban Wilderness and said the trailhead and parking area will create a high-visibility entry point for the entire area.

“The Urban Wilderness, once a diamond in the rough, is coming into its own as a premier outdoor recreation destination,” she said in an emailed statement. “It’s flourishing because of partnerships with Legacy Parks Foundation, Aslan Foundation, Ijams Nature Center, the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, Knox County, and many others committed to preserving and improving access to this unique 1,000-acre natural wonderland.”

Walsh said the plans are in the early stages and said there are a number of things that have to be decided, including what to do with all the asphalt that comes from four lanes of traffic.

Dead end history

The parkway was originally meant to continue and eventually connect with Chapman Highway, but as it is, it dead ends into orange construction signs and a thicket of trees barely a mile from downtown.

“So there it sits. It was intended to be a major corridor going toward the Great Smoky Mountains National Park going south. So now we have this major highway-looking thing that goes about a mile and a half and just dead ends,” Walsh said.

Plans to build a major roadway through South Knoxville to alleviate congestion on Chapman Highway have been discussed since the mid-1960s.

The most recent effort was the state’s proposed $104 million 5-mile-long James White Parkway extension that was shut down in 2015, largely due to the efforts of Rogero’s stance with the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization board, which nixed the expansion from its Transportation Improvement Program.

The extension would have slashed through South Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness joining the current terminus of the James White Parkway at Moody Avenue to Gov. John Sevier Highway.