The debate over the North Shore Road in Swain County has reached a fever pitch as the National Park Service moves closer toward announcing its position on whether to build the road: a 26-mile route from Bryson City to Tennessee following the shore of Lake Fontana through the backcountry of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The park service last Tuesday (Feb. 22) released preliminary data about the road, including the long-awaited cost estimate, projected tourism numbers, endangered plants and animals in the road’s path, and potential impacts to the visitor experience.

One of the options on the table is a so-called compromise: build a four-mile road into the park with a cultural heritage center, picnic area, boat dock, and general visitor facilities. It would still generate tourism and boost the Swain County economy, provide partial access to those with North Shore family roots, and appease environmentalists by not going clear across the park.

Neither side is going for it.

“This compromise solution is a sell-out,” said Leonard Winchester of Swain County who advocates the $52 million cash settlement. The pretense of the 1943 agreement was that the government owed Swain County for flooding its road. Only two actions would resolve that: either build the road back or pay the county damages, said Winchester, who votes for the monetary damages.

“This would be a slick move on the part of the park to do something they ought to do anyway with their own money, and instead use money that is supposed to go to the people of Swain County,” Winchester said. “There should have been a heritage center long ago, irrespective of building the road.”

Greg Kidd with the National Parks Conservation Association doesn’t like the compromise option either. It doesn’t do anything to resolve the 1943 agreement, which is the entire point of this exercise, he said.

“There’s nothing in the agreement that says anything about a day-use area at Bushnell. What constituency would be satisfied with this partial build?” Kidd asked.

Kidd said even the four-mile road penetrating what he calls the “largest unfragmented tract of mountain terrain in the East” is unacceptable environmentally. It’s time for the government to settle up instead, he said.

“TVA got the lake and the dam, the park service got 40,000 acres and Swain County is left holding the bag,” Kidd said. “Through the cash payment, you are doing a substitute performance for building the road. Nothing else will do.”

Those who want the road don’t like the compromise either.

“Four miles? That won’t get me to Hazel Creek,” said Lloyd Baines whose family was removed from their home on the North Shore area. “I want it all the way through.”

Baines wants to visit the site of his family’s old homeplace without piling in and out of a boat and getting carted across the lake, an ordeal the older generation simply can’t go through.

Aileen McCoy used to drive her mother around the lake to a place where she could sit and look across to the other side.

“She’d just look across the lake and point to the place where she thought her house used to be,” McCoy said. Her mother, who was unable and unwilling to ride in a boat, died three years ago without ever returning to her old home site since the day her family was evacuated in the 1940s.

To Jesse Grant, the issue is simple. The government promised a road and needs to deliver.

“A promise is a promise,” Grant said. “The government has lost enough credibility. It’s time they did something positive for a change.”

But for now, both sides fear the compromise could be what comes to fruition.

“The government is well-known for trying to orchestrate a compromise,” said Winchester.