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For Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 2010 will be a year filled with construction projects that will ultimately update the Park's aging road system.

A massive influx of federal dollars means that many of the major roads in the Park will be undergoing construction during the early part of the year. Visitors should expect closings and delays.

Cades Cove closing

Cades Cove Loop Road will be closed for repaving from March 1 through May 21. The road will be closed to all public use except for the campground, picnic area, store and horse stables.

Called "full-depth reclamation," the repaving process involves using specialized equipment that essentially rototills the existing pavement, mixes it with the underlying materials to a depth of 6 inches, then incorporates water and Portland cement. The resulting mix must harden for five to seven days before it can support loads or receive the final paving. The work will be completed under a contract from the Federal Highway Administration at an estimated cost of $4 million to $6 million.

The road will remain a single-lane, one-way byway, but the Park does plan to pave a number of informal pull-offs already in use but badly eroded.

Other road projects

Other road projects include:

Clingmans Dome Road -- Feb. 15 to May 28 -- the road will be closed to all traffic, but intermittent single-lane closures will continue until June 18.

Roaring Fork/Cherokee Orchard Road -- Feb. 1 to May 28 -- The one-way Roaring Fork Road will be closed completely, while the two-way portion of Cherokee Orchard Road will be subject to managed single lane closures.

The Sinks Parking Area and Meigs Creek Trailhead will be closed through May 25.

In addition to the ARRA-funded work, the following projects will be undertaken using $19.4 million from the Federal Lands Highway Program:

Foothills Parkway West (Blount County) -- May 10 to June 30 -- road will be subject to single lane closures.

The Gatlinburg Bypass and Newfound Gap Road from the Gatlinburg boundary.

Newfound Gap Road from Collins Creek Picnic Area to Cherokee, N.C. Work began in March 2009 and will continue through November 2010. From now through June 15, the road is subject to weekday lane closures (no work allowed during October or during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday periods). In summer 2010 lane closures will be limited to nighttime.

Foothills Parkway

The Park received $77.4 million in federal stimulus funds during 2009, with $33.4 million dedicated to building a new section of the Foothills Parkway.

The largest single project to be funded with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money will be the design and construction of a 1,200-foot section of the Foothills Parkway extending westward from its intersection with U.S. 321 in Wears Valley.

"The big ticket item is an 800-foot-long curved bridge," Park spokesman Bob Miller said.

That work is expected to cost almost $34 million. The bridge will be the longest single structure to be built along that stretch of the parkway.

Plans called for the Foothills Parkway to be finished by 2016. The latest segment of the parkway was finished early this year. Work on a segment on the Walland end went to bid in September.

Hiring trail workers

The Park, with $1.2 million allocated for the tasks, is hiring trail workers to make improvements to 22 miles of eroded horse trails in Tennessee and 10.4 miles of trails in North Carolina, as well as to restore 61 historic cemeteries in North Carolina.