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Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said Friday that the 1.5-mile "missing link" section of the Foothills Parkway in Blount County could be completed by 2016,

Ditmanson, U.S. Rep. John Duncan Jr., and other officials trekked to the end of this unopened section of the Foothills Parkway on Friday to show off the construction of three bridges on the roadway. Duncan helped secured $17.5 million in federal funding that will be used to extend the road farther.

"That money will be used to complete about 1,000 feet of road and another bridge," Ditmanson said. "We'll see how far the money goes."

Building the bridges represented a definite technical challenge, said Melisa L. Ridenour of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"We had to build the bridges from the top down," she said. "We had to be careful not to disturb anything below the structure."

The park is holding an open house today and Sunday to show off the unfinished section of the roadway. It will be open for view from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. both days. This is the first time in 10 years the stretch has been opened to vehicle traffic.

Motorists will enter the area via the Foothills Parkway interchange off U.S. 321 about 11 miles north of Maryville. The unopened segment is a dead-end and has a gravel surface, but no guardrails, striping or signs so it is not opened to vehicles on a regular basis for safety reasons. Normally the closed section is open only to hikers, cyclists and horseback riders.

The parkway was conceived in the 1920s, authorized by Congress in 1944 and finally begun in 1960. The parkway is the oldest unfinished public works project in Tennessee -- a 72-mile two-lane route that is still not half done.

"We're still closer to what it will be at some point in the future," Ditmanson said.

Park and federal highway officials estimate it will take $138 million to complete the link from Walland to Wears Valley.

"The longer we put it off, the more expensive it's going to be," Duncan said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.