Oct 13, 2026 · 38 min · 12 segments
*0:01:00* ### The long, winding history of the Blue Ridge Parkway The vast collection of trails and scenic views all along the Blue Ridge Parkway didn’t just happen on their own – the construction…
Howard NeufeldGuest
Leoneda IngeHostThe 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.
And, uh, by the early 1930s, a scenic highway had been built in Shenandoah National Park called Skyline Drive.
And so with all this interest in road building that had been going on since the, you know, early 20th century and accelerated in North Carolina in the 1920s, people got the idea of having a scenic highway to connect Shenandoah with the Great Smoky Mountains and also with Mammoth Cave National Park, which had opened in Kentucky.
And that was kind of the most immediate precursor, but there had been other proposals about scenic roads in the mountains even before that.
And the real thing that brought it all together was the arrival of the Great Depression-
... and the advent of the set of programs we know as the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt, um, which basically were efforts to inject, uh, money into the economy, to stimulate the economy, to stimulate economic growth, to buy, you know, supplies, equipment, and put people to work.
And so those programs coalesced in 1933, '34, and the people with the ideas about the scenic highway get in conversation with the people that are looking for projects to dun- to do under the New Deal.
And before you know it, 1934, there's been an idea approved to build a scenic highway from Shenandoah to the Great Smoky Mountains.
Th- 'Cause it was a big era of big public infrastructure projects, I would like to think because it wasn't that far from Washington, D.C. [laughs] You know? That, um-
... you know, we wanted, we needed something, um, on this, um, on this side of the, of the country.
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.
And, uh, by the early 1930s, a scenic highway had been built in Shenandoah National Park called Skyline Drive.
And so with all this interest in road building that had been going on since the, you know, early 20th century and accelerated in North Carolina in the 1920s, people got the idea of having a scenic highway to connect Shenandoah with the Great Smoky Mountains and also with Mammoth Cave National Park, which had opened in Kentucky.
And that was kind of the most immediate precursor, but there had been other proposals about scenic roads in the mountains even before that.
And the real thing that brought it all together was the arrival of the Great Depression-
... and the advent of the set of programs we know as the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt, um, which basically were efforts to inject, uh, money into the economy, to stimulate the economy, to stimulate economic growth, to buy, you know, supplies, equipment, and put people to work.
And so those programs coalesced in 1933, '34, and the people with the ideas about the scenic highway get in conversation with the people that are looking for projects to dun- to do under the New Deal.
And before you know it, 1934, there's been an idea approved to build a scenic highway from Shenandoah to the Great Smoky Mountains.
Th- 'Cause it was a big era of big public infrastructure projects, I would like to think because it wasn't that far from Washington, D.C. [laughs] You know? That, um-
... you know, we wanted, we needed something, um, on this, um, on this side of the, of the country.
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