CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A 64-year-old mountain feud that pitted a promise against pragmatism moved closer Friday to fading into folklore.

The National Park Service said it doesn’t plan to build the ill-starred “Road to Nowhere” through Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The government had pledged in 1943 to build a 34-mile road to replace one flooded by Fontana Lake, 150 miles west of Charlotte. A dam forming the lake was quickly built to supply electricity during World War II. Six hundred families forced off their land by patriotic duty wouldn’t forget that disruption, or the promise of a new road.

Seven miles were completed, but environmental and engineering problems stopped work in 1972.

Hot words and hard feelings have flowed like spring water ever since.

Environmentalists call the road a boondoggle that would carve up one of the largest mountain wildernesses left in the East. Grading of acidic rock formations, they say, would damage trout streams, destroy habitat for rare songbirds and black bears, and mar the untouched backcountry.

The price: up to $590 million. A 2005 environmental study, in which the Park Service took no official position, prompted nearly 76,000 public comments.

Descendants of the people whose land was covered by the rising water still expect the government to keep its old promise. The Park Service provides them boats to visit the 31 family cemeteries left behind.

“My heritage is not for sale at any price,” said Swain County commissioner David Monteith, whose father was forced off his land when the park was formed in the 1930s and again in 1943.

“I will never give up.”

Monteith’s fellow commissioners are ready to deal. A majority agreed to seek a $52 million cash payment and forgo the road.

The Park Service endorsed that approach Friday, but didn’t say how much should be paid.

That position will be included in a final environmental study to be released in September. A comment period would follow before a final decision is made.

A Swain County native son – former football hero Heath Shuler – turned the debate last fall when he campaigned for a cash settlement and beat Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C.

Taylor supported the road and, as chairman of a subcommittee that controlled Park Service appropriations, was in a powerful position to fight for it. He helped push through $16 million in 2001 to revive study of the project.

“This issue has divided Swain County and much of Western North Carolina for over 60 years, and I am very encouraged that today’s announcement signals that a resolution is near,” Shuler said in a statement.

Great Smokies spokesman Bob Miller said Taylor’s defeat didn’t influence the Park Service.

But “there’s absolutely a direct connection between Congressman Taylor leaving office and Congressman Shuler coming in and following through” on his position, said Greg Kidd of the National Parks Conservation Association in Asheville.

Road advocates accuse Shuler of selling out his home county, which has little developable land and could use the tourism a new gateway into the park would bring.

“Heath Shuler is doing a good job representing the state of Tennessee,” which has more road access to the park, said Linda Hogue of the 1,000-member North Shore Road Association.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., was among 17 members of Congress from North Carolina and Tennessee who asked the Interior Department in March to make a cash settlement to the county.

Congress still has to approve the money.

“I would love to say this is the end of the controversy,” Kidd said, “but it’s not.”

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(c) 2007, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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AP-NY-05-25-07 1929EDT