The Blue Ridge Parkway is a 469-mile scenic corridor that runs through the southern Appalachian Mountains from Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the North Carolina-Tennessee border. It has much in common with these parks -- notably motor-vehicle access to hiking, camping, and picnicking opportunities; cultural and historical attractions; and modern lodgings nestled in some of the most striking mountain scenery in the East.
Conceived in 1933 as a Great Depression-era public works effort, the Blue Ridge Parkway was begun in 1935 -- the first rural national parkway -- and finished in 1987. Its aim was to link the parks and to fight the area's dire unemployment. Today the parkway attracts more than 20 million visitors.
The Blue Ridge's attraction is its elevated views of the wooded mountains and valleys that typify the Southern Highlands: modest peaks cloaked in a lush, leafy canopy of oak, hickory, and maple, with an occasional evergreen highlight of hemlock, spruce, or fir. With the exception of North Carolina's 6,684-foot Mt. Mitchell, the highest mountain east of the Mississippi, only a few Blue Ridge summits peak above 4,000 feet, but, the Blue Ridge Parkway reaches its highest point at Richland Balsam, which is 6,047 feet. Enveloping this expanse is the bluish haze that allegedly gave the Blue Ridge its name. Originally a product of moisture given off by the forest, today's haze is frequently infiltrated by airborne pollution that occasionally restricts views and has damaged some of the high-elevation foliage.
More than six decades and 600 million visitors after it first opened, the parkway attracts a steady but uncrowded flow of weekday visitors from April through September; highest visitation is on summer weekends and during October's peak fall foliage, which usually occurs the second or third week of the month. In particularly popular areas, such as Virginia's Mabry Mill (Milepost 176.1), the traffic can sometimes resemble a big-city traffic jam -- the parkway is the most visited area in the 368-unit National Park System. Few travel the road in winter, and sections are frequently closed due to ice and snow.
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