Blue Ridge Parkway
| Blue Ridge Parkway | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||
|
|||
| Location: | North Carolina , Virginia , United States | ||
| Specialty: | 750 km long panoramic road in a hilly landscape | ||
| Next city: | Asheville | ||
| Surface: | 381.4 km² | ||
| Founding: | June 30, 1936 | ||
| Visitors: | 16,309,307 (2008) | ||
 |
|||
_location_map.svg)
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a as a National Scenic Byway designated scenic road , the 469 miles of the (755 km) along the Blue Ridge Mountains - part of the Appalachians into the United States of America - -Gebirgszugs. It connects the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and, like the national parks, is administered by the National Park Service .
course
The road begins at the north end at Rockfish Gap in Virginia and joins Skyline Drive , which runs through Shenandoah National Park . It winds about 469 miles (755 km) south and ends in the area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Cherokee Indian Reservation .
history
The idea of a parkway to connect the two national parks came about in 1933 as a result of the construction of Skyline Drive , a comparable but much shorter road in Shenandoah National Park. As early as November 1933, the US Department of the Interior passed a decision of principle, construction began on September 11, 1935, and on June 30, 1936, the United States Congress passed the formal bill to dedicate the parkway. It was planned and implemented in 45 individual construction phases. Its implementation dragged on for several decades because funding was delayed first by the Second World War and then by a lack of funding by Congress. The last section was formally started in 1968 but was not completed until 1987.
New Deal
On the one hand, the street should provide a modern tourist offer for a society characterized by increasing mass motorization . On the other hand, it became a job creation scheme for a poor and rural part of the United States severely hit by the Great Depression . President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the New Deal and imposed major public infrastructure measures.
Most of the Blue Ridge Parkway construction was carried out by local construction companies, and from the start they were supported by workers from the Works Progress Administration and aides from the Emergency Relief Administration . Both programs tried to get as many people into work as possible, so that essential parts were built by hand, although some construction machines were already available. Starting in 1936, four camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps made up of young unemployed people were used to set up hiking trails, campsites and other tourist infrastructure. By the start of the Second World War and the cessation of work, a good third of the route had been completed, and another third was in various stages of construction.
Mission 66
After the end of the war, the work progressed only slowly. In the mid-1950s, about half the road was finished when the Mission 66 program was launched in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service, which was founded in 1916 . With him, about a billion dollars was invested in the National Park System over ten years. In 1966, the anniversary year, the Blue Ridge Parkway was 95% complete, with only 7.7 miles (11 km) missing from Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. The first groundbreaking ceremony for this section took place in 1968, but construction was stopped and completely rescheduled in order to keep interference with the landscape as low as possible. On the "Linn Cove Viaduct", the road now leads around the mountain flank instead of cutting it. The full-length Blue Ridge Parkway opened in 1987.
meaning
The street is designed as a scenic route for tourist purposes with many stops and viewpoints. It is closed to commercial motor traffic and generally has a speed limit of 45 miles per hour (mph, about 72 kilometers per hour). Because of the winding but elegant road layout, the height differences (lowest point 198 m, highest point 1843 m), the untouched nature and scenic views, it is used by millions of visitors every year, including many motorcyclists.
Blue Ridge Parkway was added to the List of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1999 .
Web links
- National Park Service: Blue Ridge Parkway (official site; English)
- Special website for the 75th anniversary of the start of construction in 2010 Blueridgeparkway75.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ Unless otherwise stated, this chapter is based on National Park Service: Blue Ridge Parkway 75 - History of the Parkway ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 25, 2009)
