About the Book
» Author: Anne Mitchell Whisnant
» Pages: 464 pages
» Size: 7.625" x 22.75"
» Format: Cloth Hardcover
» Features: 51 illus., 7 maps, notes, bibl., index
The most visited site in the National Parks system, the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway winds along the ridges of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia and North Carolina.
According to popular myth, the Parkway was a New Deal “godsend for the needy,” built without conflict or opposition by landscape architects and planners who traced their uniform vision along a scenic, isolated southern landscape.
The historical archives relating to this massive public project, however, tell a different story, which Anne Mitchell Whisnant relates in this history of the seventy-year development of the beloved roadway.
More than just a make-work project for the unemployed, the Blue Ridge Parkway was conceived as a necessary boost to sagging tourism in the region.
Highlighting the roles of key players and stakeholders, Whisnant explores the design and routing of the road, land acquisition and management, relations among landowners, business interests, and government agencies; environmental impacts; and historical and cultural representation and interpretation.
She reveals what the Parkway’s seemingly unruffled scenery tends to obscure: the road owes its appearance as much to the negotiated resolution of conflicts as it does to the natural features of the mountains or the work of landscape designers. Whisnant concludes that debates over how best to preserve and manage the Parkway for the public good within a changing regional and national context will continue for some time to come.
About the Author
Anne Mitchell Whisnant's study of the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway began in 1991, spurred by a love of the mountains nurtured in seven summers spent during her youth at Lake Junaluska United Methodist Assembly in western North Carolina. For more information, read Anne's biography.
Ordering Information
Order this book from BlueRidgeParkwayStore.com. A portion of the profits from all products sold through this online-only store benefit the non-profit Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, and, ultimately, the Blue Ridge Parkway. In other words, you get to buy the book and support the Parkway at the same time!
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A New Trip along a Beloved Road
- Chapter One:
Roads, Parks, and Tourism: A Southern Scenic Parkway in a National Context
- Chapter Two:
The Scenic Is Political: The Parkway and Asheville's Tourism Industry
- Chapter Three:
We Ain't Picked None on the Scenic: Parkway Ideals and Local Realities
- Chapter Four:
By the Grace of God and a Mitchell County Jury: Little Switzerland, Regional Tourism, and the Parkway
- Chapter Five:
The Crowning Touch of Interest: Parkway Development, Cultural Landscaping, and the Eastern Band of Cherokees
- Chapter Six:
Remembering the Peaks of Otter: Telling History on the Parkway Landscape
- Chapter Seven:
From Stump Town to Carolina's Top Scenic Attraction: Private Interests and the Public Good at Grandfather Mountain
- Epilogue:
The Parkway's Past, Its Present, and the Ongoing Search for the Public Good
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Reader Reviews
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 Fascinating, November 13, 2006
"Super-Scenic Motorway" tells a fascinating history of the Blue Ridge Parkway -- just one small piece of the entire history, but an important and, as the author points out, a neglected one. At the heart of the book, Ms. Whisnant tells four stories to illustrate the impact of the political process, largely (but not exclusively) at the administrative level, on land acquisitions for the Parkway route. As noted in the Epilogue, other examples could have served the purpose, but the four, the Peaks of Otter in Virginia, and Little Switzerland, Grandfather Mountain, and the Cherokee lands in North Carolina, are well chosen, exhaustively researched and documented, and "to her credit" [a phrase I just had to throw in -- you'll have to read the book to find out why], fairly told.
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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.
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More Information
For more information visit the book's web site at www.superscenic.com.
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