Where once there was only a buffalo trail,
Where Indian campfires blazed...
Where once the red man and the white man fought...
There is a road of peace and we are thankful.
--Arsene Thompson, 1959
translated from the Cherokee
A long time ago, 230 million years before there were men to give the land a name, the Appalachian Mountains were formed. Youthful giants on the distant Paleozoic horizon, these great mountains, stretching from Canada to Alabama, were well worn and lined with age long before paw or foot traced the first trail across their forested slopes.
On September 11, 1935, foot pushed shovel into the rough soil of the Blue Ridge--an older segment of the Appalachians--several hundred yards south of the Virginia-North Carolina border. There, at Cumberland Knob, on a cold morning in a rolling forest of white pine and scarlet oak, a construction crew began the first twelve-mile section of the Blue Ridge Parkway. When the road was completed in 1987, the dream that began as a depression-era public works project was finally realized as a 469-mile scenic passageway through Virginia and North Carolina, connecting the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain national parks.
The parkway winds through a world of sharp ridges and deep hollows, graceful hills and meadows, and mixed forests of connifers and hardwoods. Spring and summer wild flowers, followed by the blazing colors of fall leaves, gentle the land like a Highlander's patchwork quilt wrapped around the family patriarch. The road travels through a region rich in American folklore and folk-craft, past small farms in out-of-the-way hollows, log cabins admidst freshly ploughed fields, streams and waterfalls dashing through hardwood forests. Mile posts mark overlooks, trails and exhibits, including Humpback Rocks (5.8), James River (63.6), Mabry Mill (176.2), Linville Falls (316.4), the Folk Art Center (382), and Looking Glass Rock (417.1).
Moments before the parkway's final section was dedicated at Grandfather Mountain, the sun emerged from a foggy morning sky. It was an auspicious sign in this haunting land of valley and knob, mysterious lights, forgotten fences, wood smoke and blue haze, dulcimer music, and extravagent configurations of stone.
--Malcolm R. Campbell, Rosicrucian Digest,
"World of Wonder" Series, September/October, 1988.
