It serves as the main thoroughfare for Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville, and includes a 4.3-mile (6.9 km) spur of the Foothills Parkway.

Most of the Great Smoky Mountains Parkway is a divided highway, except for the segment south of Gatlinburg, which carries little traffic.

The road is simply called "Parkway" in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, where most of the commercial land development has occurred in those two cities.

Both have numbered each traffic light sequentially to make it easier for non-locals to find their hotels and other tourist attractions.

This 4.3-mile (6.9 km) segment, on a narrow strip of National Park Service (NPS) land, is a four-lane divided highway which runs along both banks of the northward-flowing Little Pigeon River.

A few miles later, the parkway reaches its northern terminus at exit 407, a diverging diamond interchange with I-40 in the community of Kodak.

As a six-lane divided highway through Pigeon Forge, very tall multi-fixture street lights in the median are decorated with white LED snowflakes that fall down the poles.

In Gatlinburg, white LED deciduous trees sprout from the lampposts, in addition to other displays, such as the large one that stretches across the road at the town's northern entrance.

In late 1951, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) approved redesignating the section between Newfound Gap and Sevierville as part of US 441, and SR 71 became a hidden designation.

[9][10] Construction on the section between Banner Bridge and Caney Creek south of Pigeon Forge began on April 25, 1957, and was completed on October 29, 1958, with the exception of the northbound tunnel, which opened on March 3, 1959[7] The northernmost segment of the parkway between Sevierville and I-40 was widened from four to six lanes in three phases with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.