the Metcalf Bottoms picnic area. Upon entering the park at the gap, it becomes Wear Cove Gap Road, a narrow road without lines, which now provides a shortcut from the park to the new end of the parkway. Since opening in November 2018, this new section of the Foothills Parkway connects Wears Valley to the existing parkway at Walland to the west-northwest. Most of this was already finished (in the 1960s) or nearly so, but the "missing link" section northeast of Townsend had to be completed with a series of bridges before the section could finally open. The section east of Wears Valley (at 321/73) to Pigeon Forge and beyond is completely unconstructed, and will not occur in the foreseeable future. History Early settlement Wears Valley is named after Samuel Wear (1753–1817), a Revolutionary War veteran who erected a fort near the entrance to the valley in what is now Pigeon Forge. The original name of the valley was "Crowson Cove," after its first settler, Aaron Crowson (1774–1849). While no one is sure why its name changed, the valley was using its current name by 1900. Crowson arrived in Wears Valley from North Carolina in 1792 along with his friend, Peter Percefield. This was during a period of elevated strife between the Cherokee and the fast-encroaching Euro-American settlers. Wear's Fort was attacked in 1793, with Wear leading a punitive march against the Cherokee village of Tallassee shortly thereafter. In May 1794, Percefield was killed in a Cherokee attack. Crowson rode to Wear's Fort to get help, but the Cherokee had fled by the time he returned. Several settlers marched onward to Great Tellico to the west, where they killed four Cherokee while they slept. Percefield was buried on a hill in the eastern half of Wear Cove, in what is now Crowson Cemetery. Later that year, Crowson received a land grant for this plot of land. Along with Crowson, other early settlers in Wears Valley included a Revolutionary War veteran named William Headrick (1744–1839), who arrived in 1821, and John Ogle (1788–1841), a War of 1812 veteran and son of the first settlers in Gatlinburg. Another War of 1812 veteran, Peter Brickey (1769–1856), arrived in 1808. Brickey operated a large farm and distillery in the valley until his death in 1856. The log house he built shortly after his arrival still stands in Smith Hollow (between Wears Valley and Townsend)