During a conversation last month, Whisnant explained how the Blue Ridge Parkway came to be.

The parkway's history has a number of different antecedents, and it kind of depends on where you start, you know? Um, there were, uh, efforts in Western North Carolina starting in the 1890s to bring some kind of national park to the area.

There was work out here, um, into the early 20th century to improve roadways in Western North Carolina.

There had been scenic highway building in the western national parks, but by the 1920s, as you mentioned earlier, um, the Blue Ridge Parkway, or...

And there had been a, there was sort of an effort to bring national parks closer to population centers in the Eastern United States.

And so the Great Smoky Mountains National Park had gotten established in the '20s and opened in the '30s.

The Shenandoah National Park also got established in the 1920s.

I wonder if that, it was pushback from environmental groups in building the parkway.