Linn Cove Viaduct in fall. Credit: National Park Service
History Roosevelt didn’t arrive at this decision without inspiration. Earlier, the president had visited workers at Virginia’s first Civilian Conservation Corps camp who were working on the Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah National Park. Inspired by this beautiful drive with a top speed of 35 miles per hour, work began in 1935 on the road that would follow the crest of the southern Appalachian Mountains through Virginia and North Carolina and become the Blue Ridge Parkway. Although the parkway differs from the usual national parks in its narrow land holdings (at times shrinking to a width of only 200 feet), it is still managed like any site in the National Park Service. In addition to providing visitors a “slow-down” roadway among amazing vistas, jobs were needed. Trained engineers, architects, and landscape architects were left unemployed by the Great Depression, and thousands of mountain families were verging on poverty. The recent openings of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Shenandoah National Park were attracting tourists to the naturally beautiful but financially poor area, and the increasing availability of the automobile foresaw a new generation of motoring vacations.
BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY Story by Dee Litten Whited Photos by Warren Litten
More than 50 years before Maverick, aka Tom Cruise, said “I feel the need—the need for speed” in the movie Top Gun, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the “need to slow down.” The growth of automobiles meant more traffic, with the majority of drivers going as fast as they could to get to their destination. Although Simon and Garfunkel recorded their “slow down” song in 1966, Roosevelt was ahead of his time when he approved the construction of a 450-plus-mile scenic motor way with a top speed of 45 miles per hour. The road would link two new parks—the Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains national parks. The speed limit discouraged motorists whose only interest was getting from point A to point B in the fastest way possible. Instead, their trip would become a long, slow, and beautiful drive, famous for long-range vistas and close-up views of the rugged mountains and pastoral landscapes of the Appalachian Highlands.
BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY
COAST TO COAST SPRING MAGAZINE 2019
28
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