THE BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY A New Element in Recreational Planning By Stanley W. Abbott, Blue Ridge National Parkway Project, atten Recent emphasis on planning regionally for recreation draws tion to the simple fact that national park development so far has been limited for the most part to the featured areas which are the "end" of the motorist's journey from home. For the average family the way is long to reach the wilderness, especially in the East where travelers must drive their automobiles among trucks and buses through miles of cialized roadway before they "get away" and again as they return. development of recreation the Blue Ridge Parkway is, therefore, a new something of a first answer to the national park approach road. note commer To the The project is 480 miles long, averages 2,500 feet in elevation, and will connect Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. It is the longest road ever to be planned as a single unit in the history of American road-building. But the real interest of the work lies in the dramatic variety of the vast mountain country being made accessible, the thought that the motorist will travel for nearly the entire length of two southern states always in the invigorating coolness of the high mountains, and that through this first tourway will come the fusion of two of America's most popular national parks into one huge recreational system. Mind ful of the many cliffsides, chasms and spur ridges that lay ahead to thwart passage of a modern motorway along the Blue Ridge, more than one expert planner predicted that it would "fall of its own weight" when this $30,000,000 proposal first was made five years ago. Now, with more than 100 miles ready for traffic and an additional 190 in various stages of construction, and with the entire route plotted on survey maps, a steady advance toward its completion seems reasonably assured. Its character and usefulness should be amply demonstrated during the next two years as added miles are opened to connect a continuous route from Roanoke, Virginia, to Asheville, North Carolina. The completed portions, such as may be seen by visitors to the work below Blowing Rock and Roanoke, will differ greatly from the usual commercial highway principally because of the parkway idea. Likewise, and because it constitutes a first adaptation of the broad right-of-way to a rural region, it will differ from such parkways as Colonial and Mt. Vernon, and those near New York City which have proved so sound in the suburban plan. It will bear only remote likeness to the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah even though it was from the enthusiastic reception of that road by the public that the Blue Ridge project had its birthright. According to the parkway principle, the states of Virginia and North Carolina, through their highway departments, are acquiring for the feder |