Page:America's Highways 1776–1976.djvu/516

 later, the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway, now the George Washington Memorial Parkway, remains one of the most scenic drives in the national capital area and a continuing tribute to our first President.

George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia in 1959.

The establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Shenandoah National Park and the success of the Skyline Drive as it was developing in the Shenandoah National Park led almost to a natural conclusion—the construction of a parkway connecting the two parks.

The southern Appalachian region between these two parks was one of great natural beauty and an area depressed economically even before the Great Depression. Because of the mountainous terrain, large sections of the Appalachian area had become isolated from the mainstream of national development. Improved highway transportation was recognized as essential to the economic development of the area.

As early as 1911, Colonel Joseph Hyde Pratt, head of the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, had promoted the idea of a recreational road opening up the beauty of the North Carolina mountains to be called the “Crest of the Blue Ridge Highway.” Subsequently, an Appalachian Highway Company was organized which undertook to build such a road as a toll facility. The effort, however, was abandoned with the onset of World War I.

However, by 1933 a combination of many factors, together with the enabling funds of the National Industrial Recovery Act, made the construction of such a tremendous public works project feasible.

There was great competition between North Carolina and Tennessee over the location for the park-to-park highway, but the final location was a North Carolina routing. (An agreement between President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Ickes provided that the Government would select the route and the States would donate the right-of-way.) In December 1933, the National Park Service received an additional appropriation of nearly $4 million to start the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The design and construction of this parkway was to become a major effort for the Region 15 staff for many years. Few roads have presented such a variety of location problems. The terrain varies from gentle to the most rugged in which road construction has been undertaken east of the Mississippi River. The Blue Ridge Parkway, from the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, covers a distance of 476 miles. With the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park, it provides 573 miles of scenic parkway extending from Front Royal, Virginia, to Cherokee, North Carolina.

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