When construction began on Skyline Drive in 1931, National Park Service landscape architects and civil engineers set out to create a new kind of road that would lay lightly on the land, rolling across the mountain without major changes to the landscape while providing recreation and the simple pleasure of the view. In steep and rocky terrain, engineers devised ways to build a scenic yet stable highway, shaping a driving experience in which the road is scarcely noticed as travelers move past grand vistas and into green tunnels of trees. Along Shenandoah’s Scenic Byway, Skyline Drive appears and disappears among the trees, leading travelers toward nearly 70 overlooks that each offer a different view beyond.
