The OVNHT preserves and commemorates the route used by patriot militia in their 1780 campaign that led to victory over loyalist forces led by Major Patrick Ferguson at the key battle of Kings Mountain.  Working with a variety of partners, the National Park Service (NPS), as administrating agency for the trail, continues to identify trail segments and open them up for public use.  The newly opened 1.3-mile section of pathway is actually an original part of the route and is a roadbed that is centuries old.

On September 29, 1780, this section of historic roadway saw the passage of hundreds of patriot militia on horseback heading east through Hefner Gap and towards North Cove.  Led by Colonels John Sevier and Issac Shelby, these Overmountain men had come from frontier settlements in present day east Tennessee some days previously.  They would play a key role in the victory at Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780.

In 2008, the Conservation Trust for North Carolina was able to purchase the 534 acre Rose Creek tract, preserving land which borders the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as containing the newly certified OVNHT segment.  In April of this year, the land was conveyed to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which has worked with NPS officials to have the trail section certified.

The event is free and open to the public.  Members of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association in period colonial dress will participate.

In the event of inclement weather, the program will be held at the nearby covered pavilion at the Historic Orchard at Altapass, located at Parkway milepost 328.3.

For further information, please contact OVNHT Superintendent, Paul Carson, at (864) 936-3477, or Blue Ridge Parkway Ranger, Jonathan Bennett, at (828) 765-1228.

Shenandoah Moon presented by the Waynesboro Players

Some people enjoy the factual aspects of history while others prefer the drama. Those who enjoy a combination of the two are probably those who enjoy reading historical fiction. If you are one of these individuals, then perhaps you should have a look at the novel Shenandoah Moon, penned by the late Duane Hahn.

The novel takes place in the 1930s during the creation of Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive. It follows the story of Kathy Shifflett and her conflicted attraction to a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and it also presents the struggles between the CCC and the families that were being driven from their homes in order for the park to be established.

Not only does Hahn’s novel present a multitude of facts that would rival any history book, it also illustrates the personal struggles that everyone faced during the Depression Era. This area of Virginia is rich with history, and to read this narrative of characters so similar to the people who once lived here is to almost feel as though one has had a firsthand experience of that history. It certainly lends itself to a greater appreciation of this beautiful area as we see it today!

(One note of interest: Duane Hahn helped to transform his novel into a script which was then performed by the Waynesboro Players Community Theater in April of 2009.)

There are the obvious facilities in this section; the Otter Creek Campground with its new entrance bridge and Kiosk, the concession operated Otter Creek Restaurant, and the James River Visitor Center.  But there is so much more.

The inquisitive visitor will discover the Otter Creek Trail.  This 3.5 mile trail meanders along the creek and Parkway motor road from the campground to the visitor center.  The trail is easy to walk and crosses the creek numerous times on stepping stones and pedestrian bridges.  Sharp rock bluffs, mountain laurel, redbud, and bird life are abundant.  At State Route 130 the trail travels through an underpass of the road.  If you are observant you will see what appears to be a ditch that follows the edge of the trail.  This is the remains of what was once a large mill operation that was obliterated when the present bridge for 130 was built.

The trail forks and makes a loop around Otter Lake.  At the north end of the loop you will find the skeletal chimney and foundation of what was once the Nathaniel Sledd Cabin.  This site is believed to have been the home of the first European settler in Amherst County, Virginia in the early 1700s.  He was drawn to this location to trade with Native Americans for beaver pelts.  Otter Creek was a heavily used travel route from the mountains above to the James River and above the threat of flood.  Otter Lake did not exist at that time being built when the Blue Ridge Parkway came through in the late 1950s.  Beaver still live in Otter Creek today.  Hikers can see their handiwork in dams and the stumps and bases of trees that they have felled for food and construction materials.  Trees around the trail have wire mesh around their base to protect them from the industrious rodents.

Beyond the James River Visitor Center you will find a remnant of our Country’s transportation history.  On the opposite bank of the James River is a fully restored canal lock from the Kanawha Canal System that served as the main commercial transportation from the Shenandoah Valley to Richmond, Virginia before the Civil War.  Looking up river you will be looking into the James River Water Gap, a geological feature left from a millennium of the river cutting its way through the Blue Ridge Mountains.  This makes the James one of only two rivers that flow from west of the Blue Ridge toward the Atlantic Ocean.

So the next time you are driving through this area stop and get out of your vehicle and see what wonders await you.

Anne’s appearance is part of the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway and is sponsored by ASU’s Belk Library and Information Commons. It is also part of the library’s Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Lecture Series. Parking for this event is available on campus in the parking deck on College Street. For more information please contact Lynn Patterson at 828-262-2087.

A little about Anne:  She has earned degrees from Birmingham Southern College and UNC-Chapel Hill. She currently teaches state and public history at UNC-CH. Anne has been a consultant to the National Park Service and a member of the Board for both the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation and the BRP 75th, Inc. She is also a member of our Blue Ridge Parkway Blog Community. Visit Anne’s profile.

Along with the popular “Super-Scenic Motorway”, Anne has also published the first-ever Parkway children’s book. This book, titled “When the Parkway Came”, is a unique look at the impact the Parkway made on local families and farms when it was first being built.

You can find both of Anne’s books for sale at the Virtual Blue Ridge Bookstore.

During the war 25,000 CO’s served in non-combat roles in all branches of the military.  Some worked in understaffed mental institutions.   Another 20,000 fought forest fires and worked on conservation projects in rural areas through the Civilian Projects Service.  Although they may not have served directly, they still likely had a similar experience to many soldiers serving on the front lines, from training drills to Poker and other bonding sessions with those they served with. This later group was placed in camps which had been previously used by the Civilian Conservation Corps that was disbanded in 1942 as most of the 18 to 24 year old men in that program were taken into the military.

The CCC participants were unskilled labor recruited from areas with low employment due to The Depression.  The Conscientious Objectors were made up of men who were from a variety of backgrounds including successful farmers, craftsmen, and intellectuals.  CO’s came with a variety of skills that were put to work on many rural improvement and park projects.

One CO Camp was located at Sherando Lake in Virginia. This was a former CCC Camp on US Forest Service property. Out of this camp men worked on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the area of Humpback Rocks on trails and construction of stone walls such as those found at the Humpback Rocks Parking Area (MP 6) and Reeds Gap (MP 13). The military started to accumulate prisoners of war from mainly naval engagements. They needed facilities to accommodate these growing populations and consequently the Sherando Camp was transferred to the military and the CO’s moved to Camp #121 in Bedford, Virginia. There the men began work in the Peaks of Otter area of the Parkway. Once again they constructed trails placing stone steps and what were called fire lanes to help contain forest fires. Stone work was also done on walls and around buildings. Today if you visit the Peaks of Otter Nature Center you will walk on a stone patio that goes across the front of the building, through the breezeway, and to the rear of the building where you will find picnic tables. At the front of the building there is a flat stone with the letters “CO” carved. This is one of the few signs left by this group of men who served their country in an alternative way during World War II.

Thanks to Dave Benavitch, USFS Ret. who first told me the story of the CO’ of WWII

Photos taken from Wikipedia

Brinegar Cabin was about a mile past the Doughton Park entrance. I parked my car and walked towards the quaint cabin. The cabin was home to Martin and Caroline Brinegar in 1876 when they purchased the 125-acre property.

As rather evident from the modest cabin, neither Martin nor Caroline came from wealthy or famous families. But to their neighbors they were very important. The way the cabin is set up makes visitors feel as if they are taken back in time to the actual home of the Brinegars.

Loom demonstrations are done for the public on weekends to show how Caroline Brinegar and women of the time period provided clothes for her family. As I walked inside, two park rangers were doing loom demonstrations. What surprised me was their passion for the craft they were doing and the enthusiasm on their faces. This “demonstration” was more like an “observation” of their work.

They spent the weekends spinning the wool and then weaving it into different cloths. When asked questions about the process, these women were eager to share each step of the long process. One of the Rangers even told me she loved to weave in her free time.

Behind Brinegar cabin along the path, is a Spring House. As I peered in the door, it looked like a scene from Tuck Everlasting. The sparkling spring trickled down from the rocks with a roof and three walls around it.

In addition to drinking and cooking water, Caroline and Martin supposedly used this as a refrigerator to keep their food chilled. Also on site, were an outdoor pantry structure and a flourishing garden.

Visiting Brinegar Cabin will surely give you a peek back into our Appalachian culture.

Get a free map of Doughton Park trails at Virtual Blue Ridge.

Throughout his tenure with the NPS Phil has received numerous awards and recognitions including winning the Department of Interior’s Meritorious Award, being listed in the Congressional Record in 2006, and having a new species to science named after him by the Discover Life in America organization in appreciation for his support of their projects.

Growing up in Grover, NC, Phil then traveled to Clemson University where he receievd a BS in Administrative Management. Phil is currently married to Dr. Becky Nichols, a scientist with Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In an interview with the Blue Ridge Parkway 75th, Inc, Phil answers these important questions regarding the past, present and future of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

• Where did the idea for the Blue Ridge Parkway originate?
• Why is the Blue Ridge Parkway important?
• What is a National Park Service “unit”?
• As the Parkway enters its 75th year, what are the biggest challenges it faces?
• What’s the most exciting thing about the Parkway’s 75th Anniversary?

Read Phil’s answers in the full interview published on Virtual Blue Ridge.

The book is called When the Parkway Came, and its main story is based on a 1937 letter in the National Archives that I discovered while doing research for Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (UNC Press 2006). In the letter, an Ashe County, NC farmer writes to President Roosevelt to ask for help when he learns that the Parkway is going to come through the middle of his farm. When the Parkway Came features a fictionalized account of this family’s experience as told by the farmer’s son to his granddaughter many years later as they travel the Parkway and see where the family farm used to be. To convey the feel of the mountains in the 1930s, the coming of the Parkway, and its stunning beauty, we illustrated the story with contemporary photographs as well as historic photographs and documents. The book is appropriate for approximately ages 7 or so and up. We think it will be something that parents, grandparents, and children will enjoy reading together.

When the Parkway Came was beautifully designed by longtime UNC Press lead book designer Rich Hendel (who also did the design for Super-Scenic Motorway and David’s previous UNC Press books), and we have published it ourselves. We chose to go this route in order both to maintain editorial control (especially over the imagery in the book) and to assure that it would be available in time for the Parkway 75th next year.

The book is being distributed to retail sellers by John F. Blair Publisher in Winston-Salem (visit http://www.blairpub.com/alltitles/whenparkwaycame.htm), but individual orders may be placed directly with us. We have just received the first shipment of books, and have them available for mailing in time for Christmas. More information and a downloadable order form are available at our book website: http://www.whentheparkwaycame.com/.

Lincoln Boyhood Home National Memorial, courtesy National Park Service.

This post isn’t specific to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I thought readers might be interested in a project that I’m involved in that is taking a comprehensive look at the state of history in the National Parks. Here’s our official blurb about what we’re up to:

(By the way, the photo at left is of Lincoln Boyhood Home National Memorial, courtesy National Park Service.)

The largest learned society devoted to the study of American history, the Organization of American Historians (OAH), has embarked upon a two-year project to evaluate the state of history in the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). The study project began in 2008, under the cooperative agreement between NPS and OAH, under the supervision of the Chief Historian of the National Park Service, Dr. Robert K. Sutton. The project was envisioned by the former Chief Historian, Dr. Dwight T. Pitcaithley, who is now retired from NPS. The final report will be issued in August 2010.

Since the 1930s, when it was given official responsibility for a growing collection of American historical sites, the NPS has been one of the key preservers and presenters of history to the American public. Yet understandings of history, like our knowledge of the natural world, constantly evolve. In order to be effective in its historical mission, the parks need a robust and ongoing research program to undergird sound historic and cultural resources preservation policy and history-based educational and interpretive initiatives. This study will provide unprecedented attention to whether the current practice of history in America’s National Parks is adequate to meet the parks’ – and the public’s – needs.

In the spring of 2008, the OAH appointed a team of four eminent American history scholars, Anne Mitchell Whisnant (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chair), Marla R. Miller (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), Gary B. Nash (UCLA), and David P. Thelen (Indiana University) to conduct the study. Through surveys, interviews with NPS historians and other professionals, and park visits, the team is taking a comprehensive look at historical research and interpretation in parks. The study will focus on questions of how historical research is conducted, supported, fostered, and used in park resource management, planning, interpretation, and education.

The aim of the project is to provide critical feedback on the current practice of history in the NPS and to propose changes that would support improvement in the quality of historical research and interpretation in the parks. The final report will propose best practices for further development of effective park history programs and research projects that will allow NPS staff to employ the most up-to-date tools, insights, and scholarship of the history profession in order to better serve the interests of the American public.

This project has been undertaken under the cooperative agreement originally entered into in 1995 between the NPS and the OAH. To date, the cooperative agreement has sponsored dozens of jointly designed projects. These include critical site reviews, original research, historiographical essays, and suggestions for new interpretive directions. The partnership’s goals are to strengthen NPS history programs and forge working relationships between the NPS and the historical profession to maximize the presentation of the parks’ vast cultural resources for park visitors and the American public.

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The project will be called “Driving through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina” and will be based on the research that I did for Super-Scenic Motorway. I’ll be serving as the scholarly advisor for the undertaking, which will be coordinated by Natasha Smith at the Library. The project will build on some of the technologies developed for the Library’s other GIS-based projects, including “Going to the Show” dnd “North Carolina Maps“. We’ll begin work July 1, 2009!

Here is a blurb about the project, taken from the grant application we submitted:

“‘Driving through Time’ will present an innovative, visually- and spatially-based model for documenting the twentieth-century history of a seventeen-county section of he North Carolina mountains.

The project will feature historic maps, photographs, postcards, government documents, and newspaper clippings, each of which will be assigned geographic coordinates so that it can be viewed on a map, enabling users to visualize and analyze the impact of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the people and landscape in western North Carolina.

Primary sources will be drawn from the collections of the UNC-Chapel Hill University Library, the Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters, and the North Carolina State Archives. These materials are especially significant in that they document one of North Carolina’s most popular tourist attractions, but also in the way that they help to illuminate the way that the Blue Ridge Parkway transformed the communities through which it passed.

In addition to the digitized primary sources, the project will include scholarly analyses of aspects of the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, and an educational component designed for K-12 teachers and students.

Using digital technologies to open a new window on the history of the Parkway and its region is especially timely considering the approach of the Parkway’s 75th anniversary in 2010 and the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary in 2016.

This project is certain to be a valuable and popular resource for millions of tourists as well as for teachers, students, and historians, both within North Carolina and beyond.”

Today I’d like to offer a few quick thoughts on a wonderful book I’ve just read about the history of three National Parks in the state of Washington: Mt. Rainier, Olympic, and North Cascades. David Louter’s 2007 Windshield Wilderness: Cars, Roads, and Nautre in Washington’s National Parks (Univ. of Washington Press, which I’ve recently reviewed the NPS publication CRM: Cultural Resources Management) sheds some new and interesting light on the Blue Ridge Parkway’s history and future.

Louter, a historian with the National Park Service’s Pacific West Region, looks at the evolution of each of these three parks, formed at different moments in the twentieth century, with an eye to how the parks accommodated roads and automobiles.

Mt. Ranier, established in 1899, admitted cars in 1908 and developed during a period of enthusiastic park road building championed by first NPS director Stephen Mather. In the 1920s and early 30s, Mather and his successor Horace Albright “transformed parks into landscapes for the highway in nature” (p 36) partly by relying upon landscape architects to fit park highways carefully to the land as part of “master plans” for each park. Nature and wilderness were scenic or visual (rather than ecological) qualities; preservation occurred if the roadside picture appeared natural and roads blended into the landscape.

Mt. Ranier, a product of this period, featured a number of scenic drives, including the Mather Memorial Parkway (completed 1932), by which citizens experienced the park.

Olympic, developed after the late 1930s, reflected a newer notion of wilderness areas as roadless and thus did not feature roads in the park. However, visitors viewed the park mainly via the Hurricane Ridge Road, a scenic route developed with NPS support just outside the park boundaries.

North Cascades, meanwhile, was established in the late 1960s, in the context of the modern environmental movement. The park itself was roadless “wilderness” (by then an official category under the Wilderness Act of 1964), but the adjacent “national recreation areas” contained the familiar scenic roads by which visitors enjoyed the park.

Surveying this history, Louter argues that Americans’ ideas about what National Parks are have been formed by seeing parks through the windshield of a car. The national park system and our automobile-driven highway landscapes grew up together. And although the growth of the environmental movement through the mid-twentieth century brought the notion of roadless “wildnerness” more strongly into the American consciousness and into park management policy, it cannot be denied that most Americans have come to know their parks by driving to, through, or around them.

Thus, although there were always some who considered it an intrusion, for most Americans, the automobile has been an enabling technology, and it has seemed possible that, in parks, automobiles and nature could coexist in harmony. “Cars,” Louter writes, “have been in national parks for more than a century, and it would be hard to imagine parks . . . without cars” (page 164).

All of this is especially interesting as we think about the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

First, it casts doubt on the perennial assertion in many a popular publication that the Parkway somehow represented a bold and untested new idea. It’s simply not so. As much as we love it, our beautiful park is product of the great era of scenic road building (1920s/30s) that had already produced many other spectacular park roads like Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, the Wawona Road in Yosemite, the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway in Zion, the Rim Drive in Crater Lake, and Skyline Drive in Shenandoah.

The Parkway’s first landscape architect, Stanley Abbott, came from a long line of landscape architects and engineers who followed Major Hiram M. Chittenden (engineer who supervised road construction in Yellowstone from the 1880s to 1900s) in believing that park roads should be carefully fit to the land to present a carefully-orchestrated series of panoramas.

But the Parkway was in one respect different from these other park roads: while they wound through parks, the Blue Ridge Parkway is the park. The road is the destination.

This presents an interesting conundrum as we consider the crushing environmental impact of cars and begin to see the dawning of a post-automobile age (or at least a post-gasoline-powered automobile age). We can’t make the Blue Ridge Parkway roadless; if the road disappears, the park as we know it disappears. But can we consider whether our Parkway experience must always be mediated through a windshield to retain its value? Are we tethered forever to the idea of “windshield wilderness”?

I don’t know the answers, but the questions are worth thinking about as we try to imagine the Parkway for the next 75 years.

L-R, in this photo in 1996 - two years after saving the Orchard -- Annette Quint, Bill Carson, Cindy Medlock, and Barger Moss

from the Barger and Eleanor Moss Collection of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation Family Archives

The Blue Ridge Parkway is rich with stories steeped in history and legend; the individuals who built the Blue Ridge Parkway, to the best of my knowledge, are all gone. However, in every Parkway community there is a vibrancy of enthusiam and support for this linear national park which will celebrate its 75th birthday in only two years. If it is not our park alumni, it is our employees, and if it is not our employees it is our Parkway neighbors who have understood what the Blue Ridge Parkway was all about from the very first day that they laid their eyes on it.

Three such people are Bill Carson; his wife, Judy; and his sister, Kit who became personally intimate with the Blue Ridge Parkway when they saved it from development in 1996. Bill Carson was 56 then, only two years younger than I am now. When Bill and I compare notes, which we often do, it is always about our hopes for next year and our vision for accomplishment which never seem bigger than life — always very possible.

I have learned that there is nothing authoritative about declarations from the national park service or even the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, because we can never celebrate all the individuals that deserve to be recognized for their dedication. In my own mind; however, I believe sincerely, eventhough in their humbleness that they will strongly resist this, that Bill and Judy Carson, and Kit Truby are truly living legends.

Each in his or her own way have advanced and embodied the quintessentially American ideal of individual creativity, conviction, dedication, and exuberance. Their personal accomplishments and sense of commitment to “saving the good stuff” have enabled them to provide examples of personal excellence that have benefited others and enriched the Blue Ridge Parkway for generations to come.

Recent reports have brought welcome news that the state of North Carolina will purchase about 2600 acres of the spectacular Grandfather Mountain for protection as a public park. It’s about time.

The first effort to make Grandfather a park came in 1917 when owner Hugh MacRae tried to give 1400 acres at the top to the new National Park Service. NPS director Steve Mather rejected the donation, judging the acreage insufficient to protect the park from adjacent development by MacRae’s Linville Improvement Company.

The idea surfaced again in the 1920s, when a federal committee was searching for locations for new eastern national parks. Renewed calls for a Grandfather national park failed to sway the committee, which chose the Great Smokies and Shenandoah instead.

News coverage has portrayed the current purchase as the culmination of Hugh Morton’s lifelong conservation ethic and dreams of preserving Grandfather. No one has acknowledged the deeper history, or noted that this purchase comes almost exactly 60 years after the last serious attempt to buy Grandfather for public preservation.

To the degree that they acknowledge history, the accounts root Morton’s commitment to preserving Grandfather (evident in the 1990s and after) in his 1960s deflection of National Park Service plans to route the Blue Ridge Parkway “over” Grandfather. It is only fitting, these stories imply, that Morton’s descendents have finalized the deal by selling the mountain to the public.

This reading of history has the ring of poetry, of everything turning out as it should. But it’s not that simple.

The archival record makes it abundantly clear that the dream of public ownership for Grandfather was last promoted in the 1940s by conservationists associated with the development of the very Parkway that Morton fought, and that their dream was quashed by none other than Morton himself.

In the 1940s, Morton’s grandfather Hugh MacRae’s company, which had developed Linville, was in a financial crisis, and MacRae and Morton’s father sought to sell the mountain to the Park Service or the state. Worried since the 1930s that company-sponsored timbering was scarring the mountain, government officials welcomed the gesture but did not have money to buy the mountain.

In 1945, national parks supporter Harlan Page Kelsey (a Massachusetts landscape architect with ties to Linville) secured an option to buy 5555 acres for $165,000, with the expectation that the land be incorporated into the Blue Ridge Parkway. In the end, he raised only one pledge, $90,000 from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who had helped to buy land for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The year after Kelsey’s option expired in 1947, the state tried again to buy the mountain. But young Hugh Morton, by then at the helm of the family business, declared Grandfather not for sale at any price. Instead, he moved to develop a travel attraction there to cultivate “rich crops of tourists.”

Within a few months of inheriting the mountain in 1952, Morton bulldozed a road to one of its peaks, built his “Mile High Swinging Bridge,” and began to harvest his crops.

Three years later, Morton objected to the Park Service’s projected Parkway route at Grandfather, which, contrary to many a popular account, was never planned to go to or over the top of the mountain. But it was nearer his now lucrative summit attraction than he wanted, and he hoped to force it down the mountainside.

Deploying his political clout, media savvy, and support from three North Carolina governors and the state highway bureaucracy, Morton forced the Park Service to accept a lower route in 1968. More than a decade later, the Linn Cove Viaduct – an engineering triumph conceived by federal engineers – was built along part of the new route with no substantive involvement by Morton.

Morton continued until his death to operate the for-profit swinging bridge, nature center, and animal habitats that he had long billed as “Carolina’s Top Scenic Attraction.”

Interestingly, the state’s purchase leaves that revenue-generating portion of the mountain in the hands of Morton’s descendents’ nonprofit organization, which will run it under a state-monitored conservation easement.

Given this history, some questions arise: Is the most accessible section of the public’s new park to remain locked behind a toll gate? Will income generated (at $14 per visitor) underwrite management of the entire park, or only the Morton travel attraction?

And what of the state-Morton family partnership? We should recall that this purchase –some details of which are still unclear – continues a long state-private alliance that repeatedly placed the interests of one individual above the public good. Let us hope that the public’s interests are being better served today.

In the coming days, I will comment on the historical roots of this purchase and the questions the history raises. But for now it is interesting to note that news of this purchase comes almost 60 years to the day after Hugh Morton informed a state commission that was trying to buy Grandfather that the mountain was not for sale “at any price.” The 1940s arrangement, had it gone through, would have put the state in control of more than twice the acreage (5500 acres). The suggested sale price at that time was $180,000.

I welcome the news that (part of) Grandfather Mountain will finally be a publicly owned park. I’m certain that in the next few days this news will be lauded statewide as the great fulfillment of what is said to have been Hugh Morton’s lifelong dream of conserving and protecting the mountain. Indeed, the Charlotte Observer’s story already retreads key elements of the mythical story of the unfolding of this supposed dream, which even cursory examination of the archival record shows to be a distorted reading of actual events.

The long history of Grandfather’s journey to become a public park suggests instead that there are many questions to be asked about the new arrangement and how its benefits will be distributed, and to whom. Stay tuned.

Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary: Plans for a year 2010 celebration of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of construction are proceeding quickly. A set of kickoff events happening in Roanoke on October 9th and 10th will begin with a symposium I have arranged that will look at how an understanding of the past helps us think about the Parkway’s future. “A Living Past on a Borrowed Landscape: The Blue Ridge Parkway at 75” will inagurate a conversation about the challenges facing the Parkway. We’ll also hope to identify areas where more research about the Parkway is needed; we hope that some of that research will be presented at a larger symposium or conference in 2010. The October 9th discussion is open to the public, and I hope that many of you will plan to attend. Full details about this event and all of the other Parkway 75th kickoff plans are available here.

Now, you may ask: why Roanoke? Well, the 75th anniversary of the Parkway is actually many anniversaries, as there were many events in the 1930s that can be called “the beginning” of the Parkway. The first of those beginnings happened in the fall of 1933 when Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd covened a meeting of representatives from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee in his Washington office to flesh out what was then a fledgling idea about a parkway to connect Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. Since Virginia played such a key role in getting the Parkway ball rolling in 1933, it seemed logical that the first activity of the 75th celebration should be based among Virginians.

Blue Ridge Parkway Day at Mast General Stores: I spent last Saturday, September 13th, at the Mast General Store in Asheville, participating in their first-ever Blue Ridge Parkway day! Mast and the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation have partnered to promote stewardship of the Parkway, and Mast generously agreed to donate 10% of their sales proceeds from all of their stores on Saturday the 13th to the Foundation to support the Parkway. Saturday was a gorgeous day, with lots of people out on the streets in Asheville and many shopping at Mast. I enjoyed talking with store visitors about the Parkway and the Foundation, and loved getting to know some of Mast’s Asheville employees, who made me feel right at home. Thanks, Mast!

Talks, Talks, and More Talks: In the next two months, I’m doing seven talks and presentations about the Parkway’s history to groups as varied as the “Village Elders” in Chapel Hill to the Society of North Carolina Archivists meeting in Boone. Come out and see me! The full schedule of my public events is online here.

Whew! There are other projects ongoing as well — stay tuned! For me (to paraphrase Faulkner), the Parkway’s history is never dead; it isn’t even past.

But the sources from which a historian works (letters, reports, newspapers) are often mostly verbal, and our understanding of many of the events that those documents record (legislative debates, allocation of funds, administrative decisions, meetings) wouldn’t be helped much if we had supporting visuals.

In other cases, especially in dealing with landscapes like the Parkway, our understanding can be substantially enhanced by being able to see before, during, and after pictures. The problem for the historian is finding the images that document the history among the much more plentiful photographs of Parkway scenery – flowers, vistas, the Mabry Mill, most of which obscure as much as they reveal.

Still, several archival collections have hundreds of relevant historical images, some of which I used in my book. Especially productive were the Blue Ridge Parkway archives in Asheville, the North Carolina Collection at UNC, the special collections department at UNC Asheville, the National Archives in Washington, the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, and, perhaps most surprisingly, the archive of the Norfolk and Western Railroad at Virginia Tech (found at the last minute via a Google image search). Thank goodness for the Internet!

As I compiled the final set of illustrations for Super-Scenic Motorway, though, I was frustrated that I could not find several images that I knew must exist – and that I knew would confirm some findings that emerged from the documents. What were some of those wished-for images?

1930s timbering at Grandfather Mountain. Many North Carolinians expressed urgent concern about destructive timbering that Champion Paper was doing at Grandfather Mountain in the 1930s. “When we think of the devastation of that beautiful Mt. of God’s special gift to man, being cut down and destroyed by a lumber company, 1930s timbering at Grandfather Mountainfor the sake of gain, we feel that it is a tragedy from which our Mt. country will never recover,” wrote women of the Wise and Other-wise Club of Lenoir, NC to Congressman Robert Doughton in 1933. After a lengthy search, I did find at the Parkway archives several dark images of a timber company plank road through cut trees across Grandfather at that time, but I never could find something that gave a clearer and more panoramic impression of the devastation that was vividly evident to the women of Lenoir and many others.

Photographs of the building of the toll road up Grandfather to the Mile High Swinging Bridge in 1952. I do have two rather grainy photocopies of the blasting that construction of this road required, but nothing that is reproducible or that clearly shows the damage that several key observers said that Hugh Morton’s entrepreneurial project had caused to one of Grandfather’s peaks.

A videotape of a June 1962 joint appearance on WRAL-TV of Hugh Morton and National Park Service Director Conrad L. Wirth in an exchange over the routing of the Parkway at Grandfather Mountain. WRAL claims it has no footage of the broadcast, which several documents said was crucial in turning public opinion against the Park Service.

There is considerable irony in the fact that three of my most-desired images have to do with Grandfather Mountain, whose owner Hugh Morton was one of North Carolina’s most active photographers, and by all odds, its most prolific purveyor of his own preferred pictures of that mountain (the bridge, Mildred the Bear, the Linn Cove Viaduct, etc.).

Fortunately, we now have reason to expect that the images I was looking for and many others will soon emerge from the enormous Hugh Morton photograph collection now being processed by archivists at UNC-Chapel Hill’s North Carolina collection.

Meanwhile, if anyone reading this knows of other locations where any of these images might be, please contact me.

Four or five gunshot wounds were in Catherine D. Bauer when her dead body was found Monday afternoon in a wooded part of the Cherokee Indian Reservation, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department reported Tuesday.

No arrests had been made at the time, the department spokesman said, but he added: `We might have something tomorrow.’

Mrs. Bauer, 74, widow of Fred B. Bauer, was a former school teacher in the Fontana and Brevard school systems. She had moved recently to Cherokee from Brevard. Funeral services were held Tuesday in Brevard.

She reportedly lived alone in a trailer off Soco Road. The body was found in a wooded area off Hyatt Cove Road near the Blue Ridge Parkway, about five miles from where she resided.

This was just one tantalizing tidbit I ran across while doing the research for my book – one of many that ended up relegated to a footnote in the final manuscript. A story that had only tangential relationship to my main narrative, it wasn’t a thread I had the time to pull. Still, I have wondered all these years, what happened to Catherine Bauer?

A cursory search of subsequent days’ papers – which I did conduct after finding this article – revealed no immediate resolution to the question of who killed the dynamic white woman who, with her Cherokee husband Fred Bauer, had in the 1930s galvanized the Cherokee tribe in a five-year campaign against the Blue Ridge Parkway. At that time, Mrs. Bauer had been well known on the Qualla Boundary as a teacher in the local school and the wife of the fiery Vice Chief. Together, they had railed against a project that they characterized as a modern day land grab, part of a larger government plot to return the nation’s Indian peoples to a state of dependency and isolation from mainstream America.

The full story of Cherokee opposition to the Parkway is told in Chapter 5 of my book, but the upshot was that the Bauers’ actions garnered the Cherokees a substantial cash settlement for their Parkway lands and likely prevented the scenic highway from being built along the route where today U.S. 19, the Harrah’s casino, and other substantial private and tribal tourist-oriented development lies. Pushing the Parkway up onto the reservation’s ridges left this valley area available for the Cherokee-generated development that the Bauers preferred to government-sponsored tourism.

After the Parkway battle was resolved, Catherine Bauer and her husband moved away from the Qualla Boundary for many years, and Fred Bauer died in 1971.

How did a woman who had played such an important role in the Eastern Cherokees’ history come to such a sad end? Clues, anyone?

We bought this little device in 1994 because at that time, when I was doing research for my book, the Blue Ridge Parkway’s main collection of historical documents was housed in an abandoned dormitory at Asheville’s VA hospital at Oteen. Archivists everywhere, please stop reading now: you will shudder at the conditions under which these valuable and irreplaceable documents were at that time kept.

The collection (which had been saved from complete oblivion by former Parkway staff member Art Allen, previously the curator for the entire NPS) lived in small third-floor room the size of a university lecture hall. Shelves of hundreds of neatly numbered and labeled gray “Hollinger” (acid-free) archival boxes filled the room. A professional archivist had organized the collection a year or two before and had compiled a spiral-bound description of the materials that provided easy guidance for what would be found there. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, “abandoned building” meant that there was no electricity, no air conditioning or climate control, and no staff on site. The collection was vulnerable to fire, bugs, vandalism, and theft. It also was a challenge for researchers to use.

I did my first Parkway research sitting at a student desk by the window, and later, with the converter in hand, by carrying boxes down to the front porch, where we were in reach of the car’s cigarette lighter.

Phil Noblitt, the Parkway staff person who was at that time in charge of the archives, kindly opened the building for me each day, but had to trust me and my husband to work alone there. Contrast this with the National Archives in Washington, DC – and most other archives these days – where careful registration, security checks, and surveillance cameras are the norm.

Over the years, I have followed the Parkway archives around the mountains. For a while, they left Asheville and went over to the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, where I was delighted to find a research room with rocking chairs looking out at a gorgeous mountain view.

Finally, they came back to Asheville, where I visited them two weeks ago at their locked, climate controlled (and freezing cold!) home, which is under direct control of the Parkway.

Meanwhile, I learned that park curator Jackie Holt has been steadily adding new items and consolidating collections. She has brought to the archives historic maps and drawings and issues of the early Parkway publication, the Blue Ridge Parkway News, all of which formerly lived in different offices, and she has been scanning and digitizing other materials. Since I finished my book in 2006, some new early construction reports and superintendent’s annual reports have turned up. The finding aid, which the archivists use to help researchers navigate the collection, is now computerized.

As park archives go, the collection is a very strong one – well organized, full of treasures and valuable early (1930s and 40s) material (including a large photograph collection), and relatively complete. It is well worth the time of any researcher embarking on a Parkway-related project.

But one of the thrills of finally publishing the book I’d worked on so long is finally getting to talk to lots of live people about it! Through a series of book events and conversations with community groups, I’ve been able to meet hundreds of people who are also passionate about the Parkway’s past and future.

A special opportunity to bring past and present together is coming next week (May 20-22) when the University of Virginia will host a conference called “Designing the Parks“, which, its website notes, will examine “the design of buildings and landscapes in the regional, state, and national parks.”

The conference will feature introductory comments from the Director of the National Park Service, Mary Bomar, along with presentations from an impressive array of scholars and park planning, history, and design professionals. On the third day, participants will take tours of the Appalachian Trail; Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway; and the Charlottesville-Gettysburg corridor’s many Civil War sites, Presidential homes, and historic downtowns.

I’m excited about all of this, of course, but especially about my own panel presentation, a conversation with two very knowledgeable colleagues, Ian Firth and Gary W. Johnson, in which we’ll try to link the Parkway’s history and current challenges.

Ian is retired from the faculty in the College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia, and Gary is a career Park Service veteran and the longtime Chief of the Resource Management Division of the Parkway. For years while I was writing my book, Ian was working on a book-length Historic Resource Study for the Parkway, which surveys the historic design features of the road. Yet we’ve never met. Gary, meanwhile, has been the point person for coping with all of the ongoing challenges that managing the Parkway presents – especially viewshed protection and relations with adjoining landowners.

Our session, “A Borrowed Landscape: Politics, Design and Management of the Blue Ridge Parkway,” will at last bring design, policy, history, and management together into dialogue. And it will fulfill one of my fondest hopes in writing my book: that learning the history might provide insights that would speak to present policy concerns. So many of the struggles the Parkway has today have their roots in the past; history and historians should be talking to managers so that the past can help us think about the future.

But I do like to get out on the Parkway to understand how things relate to each other on the ground. And it is always a thrill to recognize places I have previously seen only in my head while reading documents in the archives.

Sometimes, though, places that still exist so vividly for me in the archives are no longer present on the ground. Archaeologists, of course, specialize on uncovering those places. But historians can do it too.

A few years ago, I was searching the Web for current information about Little Switzerland, a now century-old resort community in Mitchell and McDowell counties in North Carolina – which I was writing about in what became Chapter 4 of my book.

Into the Google search box I typed “Kilmichael Tower,” the name of a stone and wood tourist observation platform that Little Switzerland developer (and NC Supreme Court justice) Heriot Clarkson had built on top of a mountain peak in his development in 1935. I’m not sure what I thought I’d find; the tower, which Clarkson had in the 1930s charged people to climb to see a view, had been closed for years.

In the 1930s, though, Clarkson had gotten into trouble with the Park Service because he insisted on putting up signs on the Parkway right-of-way that directed tourists up a small road from the Parkway to the Tower. A Parkway ranger confiscated the signs, and the whole affair generated a flurry of correspondence that I had discovered in the National Archives. Eventually, though, Clarkson died and the road from the tower to the Parkway was closed.

But what had become of Kilmichael Tower?

Through the magic of the internet, I soon found out. Kilmichael Tower, it turned out, had become a little mountain chalet, owned by someone in Florida and rented out to friends and family. A few emails later, I had arranged for my husband David and me stay there for a weekend.

The place was adorable – a creative reuse of an old structure that had an impressive tall stone base. On Saturday morning, we set out to find the road from the tower to the Parkway. At first it was easy. Just a left turn out of the house, a short walk over toward the ridge, and then we started down what was clearly the old road. It wasn’t long, though, before the rhododendron became tangly and thick. Still you could clearly see the road bed, and we followed it on down. Soon, two sturdy log posts, which I recognized from the old photos as having marked the entrance from the Parkway, came into view. And there, just ahead, was the Parkway.

Driving the Parkway toward Little Switzerland from the south, you would never see this spot unless you already knew it was there. What had once been a sharp cut into the embankment was now eroded and reclaimed by dense undergrowth. Like so much of the other history around the building of the Parkway, this trace of one small but important story has been wiped out of active memory and nearly erased from the landscape. But to a discerning eye, the outlines of that history can still be seen.

As poetic in some ways as it may seem that the memory of this happy event might lift the sad pall that has in recent years settled over “September 11th,” the problem is that construction probably didn’t begin on September 11th.

The marker, I think, is wrong. Documents I found during my 15 years of research for Super-Scenic Motorway suggest that the correct date for the beginning of construction (that is, the moving of the first dirt) is September 19, 1935.

Why do I think this? Because of a discovery I made in the Parkway’s own extensive archival collection in Asheville, NC. There I came upon a copy of a letter sent on September 21, 1935 by J.P. Dodge, Senior Claim Adjuster for the North Carolina State Highway Commission, to the Chair of the Highway Commission. Dodge was the North Carolina official on the scene as the Parkway got underway.

“Representing you and the people of the State of North Carolina,” Dodge wrote, “I ordered the first breaking of ground on the first project of the Shenandoah-Great Smoky Mountains National Parkway on Thursday, September 19, 1935, at the Low Gap of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The work is progressing.” You can read an original copy of this letter and of many of the other documents mentioned below on the documents section of my personal web page for Super-Scenic Motorway.

This sounds pretty definitive, but in 1985, longtime Parkway historian Harley E. Jolley published a book titled Blue Ridge Parkway: The First 50 Years,” in which he fingered September 11th as the date when contractor Nello Teer’s “crew turned the first shovel of dirt and the Parkway’s construction officially began.”

I decided to investigate the discrepancy by searching newspapers and clipping files and my own database of over 4000 items to home in on what was happening during that week in September 1935.

An article from the Alleghany Times on September 12th was titled “Work on Scenic Parkway Link to Begin Very Soon,” and noted that on September 11, workers with Teer’s company unloaded “several car loads” of heavy machinery from the train at Galax, Virginia. The Mt. Airy News added on September 19th that “Parkway Work Started Monday above Lowgap.” A perpetual calendar reveals that “Monday” would have been September 16th. That day, 100 men deployed the new machinery and cleared brush and timber along the right-of-way. Finally, agreeing with Mr. Dodge, the Skyland Post on October 3, 1935 reported that “first dirt was moved in construction of the Parkway on September 19.”

Apparently, then, the week of September 11-18 was spent getting the equipment and men in place and the right-of-way cleared in order to start construction on the 19th.

I emailed Michael Hill, the Research Supervisor at the NC Office of Archives and History in Raleigh, who manages the State Highway Historical Markers program, and asked what documents they had on file to support putting September 11 on the marker. After all, according to the state’s procedures, a committee of historians has to be convinced that a site is legitimate and the data correct before they decide put up an expensive metal sign.

Hill told me that the marker was erected in 1988, and that supporting documents included a letter from then-Superintendent Gary Everhardt, citing Harley Jolley’s work. He noted that in designating dates for institutional histories, the commission is often “guided by administrators in identifying which evidence to accept,” and he invited me to come to Raleigh to review any more information they might have on file.

And if one were to want to propose a change in a marker? I’d have to write Hill a letter, which, to be most effective, would need to be bolstered by a letter from current Parkway Superintendent Phil Francis encouraging the change.

Sending the existing sign back to the foundry in Ohio for correction of one numeral would cost $750, while a completely new sign would cost $1585.

Changing a historical monument would not, of course, be an unprecedented act. The historical markers and sites that dot our landscape are products of people and times – and they can and should always be questioned in the light of new information or new understandings. Despite the fact that the structures or monuments themselves may be forged in iron or stone, the facts that are presented on them are not. James Loewen has written an entire book – Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong – about the erroneous history presented by many historical monuments.

So, given all of this, and given the approach of yet another anniversary, should the sign be changed, or should we leave it alone?

And each of us may experience the Parkway differently at different times. I first went there as child in the 1970s and 1980s – in the back seat of my parents’ Buick Century. Devil’s Courthouse was a favorite place for hikes then.

Going again later, as a college student waiting tables for the summer at Lake Junaluska Assembly, was a different experience. As college students will do, I tended to go up fairly late at night – part of what I’ve come to learn is a long stream of people “courting” on the Parkway. We won’t get into too much detail about that here!

It was only once I’d gone to graduate school to do a Ph.D. in history that I began to think historically about the Parkway.Super-Scenic Motorway book jacket

What do I mean by “think historically”? That’s part of what I’ll try to explain in this blog. I’ll be looking at the Parkway from the point of view of someone who has spent now more than 15 years studying the beloved road’s past – work that culminated in my 2006 book, Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (University of North Carolina Press).

What, then, is a “historian’s Parkway”? What do you see when you think historically about this place?

• You see that the Parkway is a human creation. Yes, it is the natural environment of the mountains that makes it special, but mountains alone do not a public Parkway make. Without specific actions and decisions by specific people at particular times, there would be no Parkway.
• You see that the Parkway as it now is, is one possible choice among many. There was nothing foreordained about there being a scenic parkway like this one in the southern Appalachians. There were other ways to build roads; there were other places to build them. Deciding to put this kind of road in this particular place meant choosing some options over others.
• You see the Parkway as many Parkways, the “Parkway Story” as many stories. It had to be. After all, it was built over a 52-year period through 29 quite varied counties in Virginia and North Carolina. It pierces the lands of thousands of individual landowners. It was the creation of many hands. Design vision evolved, and political and social contexts changed. Landscapes differ markedly from place to place, and each local community along the road had its own experiences with it.
• You see yourself as part of a continuum between past and present. You recognize that whatever the Parkway is and was, it is a legacy passed to us by a generation now mostly dead. They made the decisions that brought it into being, but we are not that different from them, as we will make the decisions that keep it vital. Surely as it links the Great Smoky Mountains and the Shenandoah National Parks, the Parkway joins us to all those who came before and will come after.

I hope you’ll come along with me as we peer over at some historic “overlooks” and think about what they can teach us about the Parkway in our times.

Von Plott and his Plott Hounds

A recent post on the Mr. Morton “A View to Hugh” blog site prompted childhood memories of hunting bears and growing up in Waynesville, the county seat of Haywood County. The question posed was as to the identity of the person in the photograph who by sleuth was identified as Von Plott (mountainized short name for “Vaughn”), the founder of the cold nose strain of Plott hounds according to our friends at LuckysPlott Website. The black and white photograph was taken by Mr. Morton, the second of sepia tone was provided by the Plott family. Identity confirmed!

The Plott Hound remains a venerable and respected stock of my home town. I am sorry to say that I did not grow up on the head of Plott Creek, but close enought to say that I did.

And even the National Park Service thinks enough of the story to honor it with an interpretive sign at Milepost 458 between Soco Gap and Cherokee.

Mr. Hugh Morton posing at the Linn Cove Viaduct

Guests to the site are invited to add their comments as they go. The interactive nature of the medium is clearly contributing to the cataloguing process as Morton’s friends and relatives chime in with bits and pieces of trivia about photographs that the bloggers have posted for feedback.

To see the blog for yourself, visit the University of North Carolina library on-line.

Examine the Gandfather Newsletter related to this event: http://www.grandfather.com/newsletter/november07/view2hugh.php