With a Brush of a Comet's Tail

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a 469-mile road linking Shenandoah National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, joining high mountain peaks, deep gorges, Appalachian culture, modern visitors, rural landscapes, and isolated wilderness. Carrying 17 million visitors each year, it is the most visited National Park Service area in America. Stanley Abbott, architect of the Blue Ridge Parkway, described locating it as working with “a ten league canvas and a brush of a comet’s tail,” contrasting details like moss and lichens on the shake roof of Mabry Mill with huge panoramas that look out forever. Civilian Conservation Corps workers graded slopes, planted trees, shrubs, and grasses, and built guardrails, guard walls, and overlooks. Italian stone masons built many bridges along the Parkway, and engineers designed the Linn Cove Viaduct, a suspended section of the Parkway, to preserve Grandfather Mountain’s fragile environment.

North Carolina · United States