Super-scenic Motorway

by Whisnant, Anne Mitchell

• ISBN13: 9780807830376
• ISBN10: 0807830372
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-02
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

The most visited park in the National Parks system, the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway winds along the ridges of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia and North Carolina. According to popular myth, the Parkway was a New Deal "Godsend for the needy," built without conflict or opposition by landscape architects and planners who traced their uniform vision along a scenic, isolated southern landscape. The historical archives relating to this massive public project, however, tell a different story, which Anne Mitchell Whisnant relates in this history of the seventy-year development of the beloved roadway. Highlighting the roles of key players and stakeholders, Whisnant explores the design and routing of the road; relations among landowners, business interests, and government agencies; environmental impacts; and historical and cultural representation and interpretation. She reveals what the Parkway's seemingly unruffled scenery tends to obscure: the road owes its appearance as much to the negotiated resolution of conflicts as it does to the natural features of the mountains or the work of landscape designers. Whisnant concludes that our debates over how best to preserve and manage the Parkway for the public good within a changing regional and national context will continue for some time to come.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction. A New Trip along a Beloved Road	1	(12)
Roads, Parks, and Tourism: A Southern Scenic Parkway in a National Context	13	(39)
The Scenic Is Political: The Parkway and Asheville's Tourism Industry	52	(56)
We Ain't Picked None on the Scenic: Parkway Ideals and Local Realities	108	(48)
By the Grace of God and a Mitchell County Jury: Little Switzerland, Regional Tourism, and the Parkway	156	(27)
The Crowning Touch of Interest: Parkway Development, Cultural Landscaping, and the Eastern Band of Cherokees	183	(31)
Remembering the Peaks of Otter: Telling History on the Parkway Landscape	214	(49)
From Stump Town to Carolina's Top Scenic Attraction: Private Interests and the Public Good at Grandfather Mountain	263	(63)
Epilogue. The Parkway's Past, Its Present, and the Ongoing Search for the Public Good	326	(5)
Notes	331	(64)
Bibliography	395	(22)
Index	417