 A View of the Parkway Via Larger
Historical Forces, December 25, 2006
Anne M. Whisnant has written not only an analytical work with penetrating insights into the difficulties of creating recreational spaces for the public good but has managed to do it with beautiful and engaging prose. The first work on the Parkway not to get bogged down into trivial details about the construction process (as a response to Harley Jolley's work), Super-Scenic Motorway uses several vignettes to highlight how the Parkway came to be, what it was supposed to represent in the eyes of many different groups, and the difficult choices inherent in pursuing a public good.
These vignettes illustrate how the Parkway was vigorously pursued by Ashevillians as a panacea for the ills of the Great Depression as well as by other groups who saw its potential for economic benefit. What is clear from Whisnant's work is just how much the Parkway was a creation of mankind -- clearly, Parkway planners had to "improve" upon the natural setting to make it live up to their ideals.
Though Parkway boosters praised the combination of conservation and economic benefit, not all people welcomed the super-scenic motorway. Displaced mountain residents, those who worked with restrictive land covenants, and those who were denied the promise of a paved road by limited access all found reason to complain about the beaucratic nightmare that was the process of building the Parkway. Whisnant is careful to show that the definition of the public good creates winners and losers and she does not privilege the Parkway's boosters over the losers, nor does she romanticize the losers as victims. The account of both sides is nuanced and insightful.
The majority of the vignettes come from the North Carolina experience, highlighting incidents involving Asheville, Little Switzerland, Grandfather Mountain, and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. A nod to the Virginia Parkway experience looks at the politics of history and memory at the Peaks of Otter. Whether this unevenness of treatment is the result of the bounty of archival material, authorial choice, or historical circumstance (perhaps North Carolinians had more to fight over?) is not clear. The theme of public good and the choices that it defines, however, ties the vignettes together in this masterfully written work.
By Gregory S. King
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