Blue Ridge Parkway Journeys

I subscribe to a Google groups listserv called Park Land Watch that sends me multiple articles every day about all kinds of issues facing the National Parks. The topics raised on the list remind me that our beloved Blue Ridge Parkway is part of a large national system of parks, and that its struggles are, by and large, emblematic of the troubles faced by the entire National Parks system.

On Wednesday this week, for instance, I got the a link to an article from the Honolulu Advertiser describing funding shortages at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Read more »

In some recent posts, I’ve been trying to give a historically-informed analysis of the “preliminary alternatives” recently announced for the public’s consideration and commentary to help the Parkway staff writes a General Management Plan for the park. Today’s topic? The comments I submitted in response to Question 2.

Read the spring 2008 GMP newsletter and learn about the preliminary alternatives here.

Question 2. Which parts of any of the preliminary alternatives to you feel strongly should be included in the futuremanagement of the parkway?

I think there are three key aspects of the preliminary alternatives that should certainly be included in the future management of the Parkway: Read more »

In this and the next several posts, I’m trying to give a historically-informed analysis of the “preliminary alternatives” recently announced for the public’s consideration and commentary to help the Parkway staff writes a General Management Plan for the park. Today’s topic? The comments I submitted in response to Question 1. Read the spring 2008 GMP newsletter and learn about the preliminary alternatives here.

Question 1. Is one of the three preliminary alternatives (A,B,C) already close to your idea of the best way to manage the Blue Ridge Parkway? If so, which one, and how might you modify it to make it closer to your interests and concerns? Read more »

For several years now, the staff at the Blue Ridge Parkway has been working on writing a General Management Plan. Before you start yawning, let me explain a bit: what is a General Management Plan, and why should we care?

Partly we should care because the Parkway is under legal mandate to have a GMP under the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978. That act directs all parks to develop a GMP to guide and rationalize park management for a fifteen-to-twenty-year period. Is writing a GMP in part an effort at not-too-sexy-sounding “compliance,” then? Well, yes, but it’s much more important than that implies. Read more »

The January 3, 1979 Asheville Citizen-Times story was brief and sterile:

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? Read more »