DigitalNC: North Carolina's Digital Heritage

Background

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a road that spans 469 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and North Carolina. The Parkway has been one of the most-visited sites in the National Park Service system since the 1940s, drawing crowds of visitors who wish to view the mountain scenery and enjoy nearby towns and tourist attractions. Although the Blue Ridge Parkway was formed to provide employment for job-seekers, improve local economies through increased tourist traffic, and connect two national parks, the road’s history shows that conflict played a key role in preventing these goals. Disagreements over route planning, eminent domain, and other land issues were a significant hurdle in building the Parkway.

The project to build the Blue Ridge Parkway was first put into action in 1933 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal agency established to create jobs for the unemployed by funding large public works projects. After funds were received and planning of the Parkway began, arguments arose over how the road would be routed. The Parkway was meant to connect two national parks together: the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. Two conflicting proposals for the route were submitted by North Carolina and Tennessee officials, leading to a long battle over which state’s preferred route would receive approval from the federal government. The federal government held hearings on the issue until the North Carolina route won approval in 1934. North Carolina lobbyists–many of them businessmen in the tourist industry–helped support their state’s proposal. As sections of the Parkway were completed, already-established tourist areas of western North Carolina, like Asheville, Blowing Rock, and Little Switzerland, saw significant economic benefits from increased tourism.

Routing proposals were not the only source of conflict for the Parkway. After the North Carolina route plan had been approved, the state government had to take ownership of the lands that the route would pass through. As Parkway planners wished to retain the beauty of the surrounding scenery, the government also had to establish ownership over the land beside where the road would be built. This meant that Parkway planners would be in control of areas of land, sometimes up to a thousand feet, adjacent to the Parkway itself. 

North Carolina used the power of eminent domain to take control over lands for the Blue Ridge Parkway. With this power, North Carolina forcibly bought land from thousands of landowners living along the future Parkway route. Although Parkway advocates often claimed the road would bring economic gain to the region through tourist visits, many of these rural landowners received no great profit from Parkway tourism. Eminent domain caused them to lose their lands and homes, and they often had little choice in refusing to sell their property for the Parkway. Other land and routing issues arose with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. While Cherokee land was not threatened by eminent domain, it was a subject of intense disagreement between the Cherokee tribal council, the National Park Service, and the North Carolina State Highway Commission for years. Parkway planners initially offered the Cherokee council a route that would cut through valuable farmland in Soco Valley and encroach on many people’s lands and homes. By 1940, however, the Cherokee accepted a new route proposal that bypassed Soco Valley. 

Even after past issues had been resolved, more problems emerged and prevented the completion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. World War II put a temporary stop to construction work on the Parkway from 1943 to the end of the war. In the 1950s and 1960s, the owner of popular tourist attractions on Grandfather Mountain blocked Parkway planners from building the final “missing link” of the Parkway. Construction did not begin on the last seven miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway until 1968, when a compromise had finally been reached between the National Park Service and the Grandfather Mountain owner. It was not until 1987, when work on those seven miles had finished, that the Blue Ridge Parkway was completed.