Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia and North Carolina (1949‪)‬

Blue Ridge Parkway, high road through Virginia and North Carolina, designed especially for the leisurely tourist, represents a new conception in roads. It is not an express parkway of the type built about the big cities, but a quiet way through a distinctive part of the American scene—a road intended for gypsy-like travel on the ride-awhile, stop-awhile basis.

You travel the Southern Highlands, a land of forested mountains, exquisite during the flower of spring, cool in the green summer, colorful in the red autumn. The stretches of woodland, the clustered mountains, and the views out to the lowlands are enlivened by the fields and pastures of highland farms, where split rail fences, weathered cabins, and gray barns compose the “hill culture.”

Not all is completed of this scenic parkway, the first of its kind to be developed by the Nation; but long portions are paved and were enjoyed by more than a million visitors last year.

Among the national parks in the East are Shenandoah, in northern Virginia, and Great Smoky Mountains, in North Carolina and Tennessee. One of the purposes of the Parkway is to connect these wilderness areas over a mountainous distance of nearly 500 miles. The Parkway, about two-thirds completed, leads through an “elongated park” which protects a roadside of varied highland character. The roadway slopes are naturalistically planted in many places with rhododendron, azalea, white pine, and other native species. Parking overlooks to the side are convenient balconies. Along the Parkway at intervals are recreational areas with picnic grounds, campgrounds, trailer sites, and hiking trails which lead to exhibits of unspoiled nature and to spots of native folk lore.