Shortly after Congress authorized the creation of Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains as new eastern national parks, President Franklin Roosevelt promoted construction of the first national rural parkway to connect them. The growing popularity of the automobile and leisure driving had already made Skyline Drive, Shenandoah's mountaintop road, an immediate success. With labor and funding from New Deal programs, the National Park Service began building the Blue Ridge Parkway in 1935. In the decades since, hundreds of millions of motorists have traveled through Shenandoah and along the 469 miles of the Parkway to the Great Smokies, experiencing the varied scenery and protected landscapes of the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, including Shenandoah's nearly 200,000 acres of protected forest habitats and the pastoral mountain countryside, traditional culture, and diverse plants, animals, and habitats found along the parkway in Virginia and North Carolina.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Afton, Virginia · USA