Prior to the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Newfound Gap was an undiscovered pass two miles east of what was long thought to be the lowest mountain pass over the Great Smoky Mountains, Indian Gap. Indian Gap Road, an unpaved, arduous trail frequented by traders, farmers, and even by the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, was completed in 1839 and named after the old Cherokee Indian trail that the road paralleled. Newfound Gap itself was not recognized as the lowest gap over the mountains until 1872, when Arnold Guyot measured many of the mountains in the area and determined the Newfound Gap to be a lower, more accessible mountain pass.