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About a mile of the road was constructed near the dam, as well as six miles at the other end, near Bryson City. The longer stretch ends at a 1,200-foot-long tunnel, a tunnel to nowhere for what is now a road to nowhere. What's missing is the middle of the road, 29 to 38 miles, depending on the exact route.

Kirkland sported a red baseball hat with the legend "Build the Road." A white Ford next to my car at our adventure's launch site, the Cable Cove boat ramp near the dam, had a bumper sticker with the same admonition. So did a half dozen other cars and pickups at Cable Cove — and hundreds more in the towns around the lake. If you drive on the aborted highway outside Bryson City, an aging sign proclaims: "Welcome to the Road to Nowhere. A Broken Promise. 1943 - ?"

When Lake Fontana flooded the river valley, it submerged N.C. 288, a rural artery that had accessed about 44,000 acres of what is now called the North Shore. That land, which would eventually become part of the national park, cradled villages, homes, schools, churches, theaters, ice cream shops and a thriving logging industry. "Half of Swain County lived there," Monteith told me as we sped on the half-hour voyage across gray-glass water steaming with the morning chill. "There were 14,000 people in the county then." He paused and added, "Countin' Cherokees."

Monteith said Swain County now has 11,000 people. The 2003 Census estimate is 13,126, but the message still holds — the lake drove a lot of people away, 7,000 by Monteith's estimate. Environmentalists point to government figures that show only 264 families were displaced when the lake was flooded.

Our destination that day was Hazel Creek, a frothy mountain stream where the town of Proctor, first settled in the 1850s, once thrived.

Linda Hogue, a teacher for three decades, is chairwoman of a citizens' committee that wants to build a new road. She's a formidable woman with a jutting chin and a schoolmarm's no-nonsense glare when she lectures. I followed her up a hill toward where Proctor's school once stood.

"Look-y at this," she beamed, bending down to brush away dirt and leaves from what would turn out to be an intricate iron side of an old student desk. "I've found desks before, but nothing so elegant as this." Monteith peered at the artifact, and shrugged, "And the Park Service says there's no history on the North Shore."

Monteith doesn't have much love for the Park Service. He repeatedly told the trekkers about how when the rangers would find an old home, they'd burn it. Or, how they'd break jars, dishes and other household items so park visitors wouldn't carry them out. (The rangers confirmed that years ago, abandoned houses were demolished — after owners were given the option of dismantling and moving them.)

"Trying to erase our history," Monteith groused in a torrent of swollen words. "Trying to erase that people were ever here. And it's not just white people I'm talking about. Wherever white people settled, Indians had settled there before. Their culture has been erased, too."

Hogue chimed in: "They knew the lake would never back up this far. They destroyed all of this because they didn't want people to come back. This could have been a wonderful museum."

Proctor in its heyday was a booming one-industry town anchored by the W.M. Ritter Lumber Co. Good jobs during days when work was hard to find. Ritter moved out in 1928, but the town remained and lurched through the Depression, a little shabby but still a place to call home.

Wealthier folks lived on the south side of the creek, along Strutting Street — or, as Hogue observed, "Struttin' because when they went for walks along the boardwalks, they strutted, if you know what I mean." The southside boardwalk went past the town commissary and the train depot.

On the north side was Calico Street, along with a community clubhouse, a theater, the Ritter family house and, of course, the Baptist church. About all that's left now are a pump house and a "dry kiln," a large structure where logs were dried.

Only one home remains in Proctor, the 1928-vintage Calhoun House, a once-fine place that is falling apart.

"The park service says they can't restore it because bats are living in it and the bats are protected," Hogue said shaking her head in disgust.

As we trooped out of Proctor, we passed the town cemetery. A mile or so up a trail is another graveyard. Monteith told me tales about many of the 33 cemeteries on the North Shore, including a burial site in a place called Bone Valley — named not for decomposing humans but for cattle that froze there more than a century ago.