A document entered into a court battle over a backcountry use fee charged at Great Smoky Mountains National Park confirms that a resort outside the park boundaries illegally cleared and maintained a trail inside the park.

The existence of the trails surfaced in connection with a lawsuit brought against the Park Service by Southern Forest Watch, a nonprofit group organized to overturn the park's $4 per night fee charged on backcountry travelers. Though not central to the fight over the backcountry reservation system, the group pointed to the "illegal trail system" as part of a pattern of "political patronage" that former park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson oversaw. Mr. Ditmanson, who instituted the backcountry fee system in 2013, retired from the Park Service earlier this year.

The document U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton accepted in the case was a June 13,2014, letter from the park's chief ranger, Clayton Jordan, to Matt Alexander, executive vice president for Blackberry Farm. In it Chief Jordan recounted a phone call he had had with Mr. Alexander "to memorialize our phone conversation to ensure that there is a clear understanding between the park and your staff as to what is and is not permitted in regards to use of the abandoned boundary trail."

The three-page letter (attached) went on to recount that as far back as 2009, at least, the resort staff had begun to maintain the old trail, marking the route with painted blazes as well as wooden slats, and even erected sign posts "at multi-trail junctions of NPS and Blackberry Farms' trails located at the park boundary at Blair Gap and a trail intersection a quarter-mile to the west. One signpost included a map box containing handouts produced by Blackberry Farm depicting the network of public and private trails in the area."

While Chief Jordan wrote that park management, including the former superintendent, wasn't made aware of the illegal trail maintenance until Southern Forest Watch raised the issue, he added that an ensuing internal inquiry determined that a field law enforcement ranger for the park had discovered the trail work in 2009.

"...he documented at that time the presence of signage, blazes, and evidence where dead and down trees had been cut to maintain open the abandoned trail," the chief ranger wrote.

No criminal case was opened at the time because the trail work was determined to not have caused any significant damage "and no negative impact to the park visitor experience."

When the field ranger was told to check on the trail in 2012 after the matter came before the superintendent, he "found that there appeared to be no evidence of continued clearing of the abandoned trail and that the advisory signs had been relocated off park land," wrote the chief ranger.

However, further investigation by a ranger with a GPS unit earlier this year determined that one of the signs was within the park, and he removed it at the chief ranger's direction.

"At this time," the chief ranger concluded, "let me again express my appreciation for your continued cooperation and acceptance of responsibility for actions taken by your staff. As also previously communicated by Superintendent Ditmanson and our field ranger -- please allow me to repeat that any unauthorized action within park boundaries, no matter how well-intentioned, is not legal."