Would you like to ride the "Dragon"? Catch it by its tail? Then you better head to the Tail of the Dragon, a beautiful and picturesque road on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee where motorists go to get their thrills. But don’t get fooled by the beauty of the road and its curves because it has claimed many a life and continues to do so.
Depending on your experience, this road could be heaven or hell. While most consider it the ideal motorist’s playground, one mistake and it turns into the end of the road for many. It's scenic and yet if you take your attention off the curves and the cambers at the wrong time, that’s it. And it's not easy for help to get here fast.
But like most things dangerous, including extreme off-roading, this road too has its die-hard fans. Some of whom, unfortunately, did die hard on it. So the road serves both as a temptation and a warning call for those who dare to ride or drive on it.
So here’s the lowdown on the Tail of the Dragon and why it's like a siren for motorists, as one of the most beautiful and dangerous roads in the US.
The Tail Of The Dragon Lies On Route 129
Hundreds of blind curves, steep cambers, and views that can dangerously detract you from what lies ahead – that’s what driving on one of the most beautiful roads in America gets you. The Tail of the Dragon is 11 miles long and has 318 curves, many of which are blind. Technically, it's known as Deal’s Gap and is a part of Route 129 in Blount Country, Tennessee, and Swain County, North Carolina.
The curves are deadly. And you can know this by the names. While Sunset Corner, Hog Pen Bend, Shade Tree Corner, and Mud Corner sound rather literary and pretty, in reality, if you lose sight of the path ahead by something scenic, you can be in a very precarious situation. Want more names of the bends? There’s Copperhead Corner, Wheelie Hell, Gravity Cavity, Brake or Bust Bend, and well, Beginner’s End. You get the gist. The road gets its names from the curves, said to resemble a dragon’s steeply curved tail.
If the curves don’t get you, the weather can. While summers are fairly easy with some showers here and there, the winter months of November through March are nigh well impossible to know, till it happens to you. Not only do you have to deal with snow and ice that can come down, any time, winters is when the wild animals also descend so you get to deal with bears, wild boars, and even turkeys and deer which can be a problem if they suddenly appear around a blind turn. And then there are the snowstorms and blizzards.
And in case you plan to ride in the dark, well, we suggest you don’t.
Gas & Help Is Miles Away
All parts of this road are either rural or remote so in case you do end up having a spill, the nearest ambulance or rescue can only reach you in 45 minutes, in good weather. Transport to a hospital will take another 45 minutes so that is more than 90 minutes of pure pain and misery.
If you forget to fill her up before the run, then you have had it because the only gas stop on this stretch is at the end of the rail in North Carolina at the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort. Trying to push your bike or car to the end is going to be Herculean and calling for help means you get to sit and cool your heels on a narrow road, which is pretty dangerous in itself.
At this very resort, if you managed to complete your run without injury or mishap, you’d get to know how lucky you are because a group of Harley-Davidson riders formed the “Tree of Shame”. It's a tree covered with crashed motorcycle parts or as the H-D riders say, the ones that have been “bitten by the Dragon”.
The idea is to avoid your motorcycle or car parts from ever adorning that tree.
The Statistics Tell A Gory Tale
According to the Sheriff’s Office of Blount County, there were 178 crashes on this road between November 2015 and April 2017, with 90 injuries and three fatalities. In a decade alone, the Dragon claimed 27 lives, four more than the rest of Blount County’s 1,100 miles of road.
While trucks are no longer allowed on this road due to the damage and fatalities a large accident can cause, cars run on this road all year long. So at any time, rounding a bend means there’s could be a vehicle speeding around the corner, thus vigilance is key on the Dragon.
There is plenty of law enforcement on the road to deter trigger-happy acceleration though. And even the speed limit has been dramatically reduced. Before 1992, you could zip on this road at 55 MPH, but in 1995, speed on the Tennessee end was reduced to 40 MPH and then further downed to 30 MPH in 2002. North Carolina took a while to hit 30 MPH but it too did so in 2005.
So as long as you take the Dragon on a meandering pace, with keen attention at every corner and bend, with proper tires and a well-serviced vehicle, you are good to go. Else, you might just get bitten by the Dragon too.
Sources: dangerousroads.org, KnoxNews