The Heritage of the Blue Ridge Parkway
"The Parkway has but one reason for existence," said the late Stanley W. Abbott, designer of the Blue Ridge Parkway, "which is to please by revealing the charm and interest of the native American countryside."
In 1933, when US Park Service accepted the challenge of building a scenic highway to connect the Shenadoah National Park in Virginia with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina, Abbott was chosen to serve as the first Resident Landscape Architect and then as the first Parkway Superintendent from 1937 to 1942.
"It is no simple matter to define irrevocably what a national parkway should be," said Abbott. "We have no precedent so far as I know in the world.
"The Blue Ridge Parkway is a pioneer among parkway types," he explained. "In this project the national government, in cooperation with the states, seeks to meet on a broad scale of interstate planning the ever-increasing demands of the vacation tourist. In the broadest sense, it is to be a drive for recreation - for the leisurely motorist who may spend days or even weeks vacationing along it's 470 miles."
Ample rights-of-way
Abbott's philosophy of parkway design is woven through all of the newspaper articles, personal papers and tape-recorded interviews that survive him. The most significant principle was his dedication that the park should be wide enough to allow for a buffer zone on either side of the roadway so that no billboards or hot-dog stands would spring up in the traveler's line-of-sight.
When Abbott began reconnoitering the road in 1934, officials were discussing the idea of a 200 foot right-of-way. By 1935, Abbott showed that the narrow right-of-way was not adequate to circumscribe many of the cuts and fills necessary to build the road. The Park Service then decided to ask the states to acquire 825 feet of right-of-way and an additional 400 feet of scenic easement beyond the boundaries.
North Carolina law-makers bumped that figure up to 1,000 feet of right-of-way plus the 400-foot scenic easement. Virginia legislators, however, negotiated for 400 to 800 foot right-of-way, depending on how landowners used the property being crossed. Virginia farmers were unwilling to accept the encumbrances of scenic easements, so views beyond the park boundaries were not protected north of the Tar Heel state line.
The road as art
A second principle of Abbott's parkway was the idea that the road was a work of art. "All elements must compose, so as to please," he said.
"Having selected a route for the road," said Abbott, "you designed a road that fit the topography sympathetically. That took, well, almost a form of sculpture - a third dimensional insight into the main contour of the land - whether on broad curve, or, sometimes where the road wanted to straighten out because the land straightened out."
Abbott believed that one could get gorged on scenery. He championed variety in visual stimuli and his associates said that he charged them to follow a mountain stream for a while, then climb up on the slope of a hill pasture, then dip down into the open bottom lands and back into the woodlands.
The Blue Ridge Parkway's visual excitement springs from the fact that the terrain changes every few miles. Travelers are inspired by the towering heights and rugged cliffs of the highest peaks in the Blue Ridge mountains as the road enters the Avery County at milepost. Then at milepost 304.4, it skirts the lower flanks of Grandfather Mountain via an award-winning ribbon of road called the Linn Cove Viaduct. For the next five miles the parkway weaves in and out of rhododendron thickets, trees parting every mile or two to reveal vistas overlooking hundreds of mountaintops that stretch 40 miles to the horizon like so many waves on the ocean. The road next passes through pastureland enclosed by old-fashioned rail fences before arriving at an unpretentious turn out that leads to the top of a 90-foot waterfall.
The cultural landscape
Coupled with Abbott's principle of variety came his concept of what was scenic; his sensitivity for the cultural landscape as well as for the natural landscape.
"Through much of its length the parkway goes through a 'managed' landscape," he said. "I think it has been pretty clear and relatively unquestioned within the (Park) Service that the problem was to marry ourselves to that managed landscape. This has required a feeling for the rail fence, the old barn, and the farm field."
To further reveal the charm and interest of the American countryside, the Park Service leases property lining the parkway to area farmers for growing crops or grazing animals to bring the cow, or winter wheat, or corn up to the edge of the road.
Wayside parks
Although the Blue Ridge Parkway may sound like a narrow strip of landscaped roadside, it was commissioned to be an elongated National Park. The plan included the development of wayside parks and recreation areas to be spaced every few miles for the length of the road. In the 20 miles of parkway that run through Avery, five wayside parks offer a spectrum of recreational opportunities.
The Tanawha Trail departs the roadside at milepost 305.5 and leads hikers up into the wilds of Grandfather Mountain. Thirteen and a half miles in length, the trail is known for its diverse biological and geological features and is one of the most popular hikes on the 470-mile length of the parkway.
At the Linn Cove Viaduct Visitor Center guests can hear the story of the span engineers consider "the world's most complicated bridge," and they can embark on a network of trails that lead under and around the amazing structure.
One mile south, adventurers can stop at Grandmother Mountain and take a trail to one of the most highly praised bouldering sites in North Carolina.
At milepost 316.4, Linville Falls is one of the most popular campgrounds in the parkway system. Visitors park at the Visitor Center and walk one half mile to the top of the spectacular waterfall that marks the head of the "grand canyon of the East," the Linville Gorge.
Trails leading into Linville Gorge start at milepost 314. Camping overnight in the gorge on weekends between May and October requires a permit to insure that the gorge is not severely impacted by hiker traffic. The free permits are available at the permit cabin on the Kistler Memorial Highway just a short distance from NC 183.
"All the parks are going to add to the fact that the 'scenic' will be a new kind of recreation unit," Abbott prophesied. To him, the wayside parks were "a most important part of the formula. Like beads on a string, the rare gems in the necklace."
As if nature had put it there
These and other concepts set forth by Abbott in designing the Blue Ridge Parkway are today considered part of the definition of a scenic road. Yet all of the subtleties of his work as a landscape "artist" were summed up when he said, "the idea of the landscape architect is to fit the parkway into the mountains as if nature had put it there.
