A couple years ago when we were visiting friends in far western North Carolina, we came across an entrance for the Blue Ridge Parkway. We decided to drive along the road for awhile, but conditions quickly deteriorated with dense fog enveloping the roadway. After a couple miles, we turned around and headed back down out of the fog and continued on to our next destination. However, during our trip to Asheville, we decided to find information on the Blue Ridge Parkway and go for a drive along the trail.
Our first stop was to the Asheville Visitor Center at the suggestion of my wife. The Visitor Center is located just north of downtown just off of Interstate 240 and is the starting point for many of the trolley tours that take tourists around Asheville. (see map) In addition to providing local tours, the Visitor Center has a number of brochures about attractions around the area, they have a gift shop and a ticket counter where they sell admissions to the Biltmore Estate. I was looking through some of the brochures when my wife approached one of the many volunteers at the desk to ask her about where to go on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Well, it turned out that she was talking to the right person, a lady who told us that we needed to go up to Mt. Pisgah - specifically, the Pisgah Inn. "It's about a 45 minute drive - probably an hour if you stop along the way at some of the scenic turn-outs," she explained to us. "But you'll get a full Blue Ridge Parkway experience on the way up and back." She showed us an entrance to the Blue Ridge on a map she provided to us and it wasn't far from our hotel. My wife and I decided to take off and head over to the parkway from the Visitor Center.
It was just after 10:30 when we pulled onto the Blue Ridge Parkway around mile marker 395 just east of Asheville and we turned south. The roadway wasn't all that wide and the speed limit varied from 35 to 45 miles an hour. There were no shoulders along the road and there were a lot of curves and turn backs along the route. We had rented a Volkswagen Passat for our trip and it handled the mountain roads very well.
My wife particularly loved the tunnels that bored through the mountainside. We went through 9 tunnels on our journey up to and just past the Pisgah Inn. The lengths ranged from 375 feet at the Ferris Knob #3 tunnel to 1434 feet at the Pine Mountain tunnel - the longest along the 469 mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is actually a National Park, the longest linear park in the nation. The roadway and land on either side of the parkway is maintained by the U.S. National Park Service and it has been the most visited park in the nation since 1946 with the exception of three years. The Blue Ridge Parkway spans from near Waynesboro, VA on the northern terminus to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Cherokee, NC on the south end.
The Blue Ridge Mountains get their name from the blue hue haze that is caused by isoprene emanating from the millions and millions trees along the range. The Blue Ridge Mountains are technically part of the Appalachian Mountains, but are separated by the Great Appalachian Valley. The Mountains stretch from northeastern Georgia and end in the hills of southern Pennsylvania.
The Blue Ridge Parkway was commissioned by President Franklin Roosevelt in the mid-30's as part of his New Deal programs that put people back to work after the Great Depression. Much of the roadwork was done by local contractors who worked under the Works Progress Administration along with workers with the Federal Emergency Relief Agency and Civilian Conservation Corps who did landscaping, painting, clean-up and roadside recreation areas. While most of the work was completed just before World War II, but there were parts of the parkway that weren't connected until the mid-60's. Well, with one exception - a seven mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway in northern North Carolina was finally completed in 1987. It was over 50 years from the start of construction in western North Carolina to when the final part of the road was completed.
As you can see, there were some pretty vistas along the way up to the Pisgah Inn. There were a number of turnouts with each one offering something completely different in views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a partly cloudy day and somewhat humid giving even more of a hazy view of the mountains.
Along the way, we found out that the Pisgah Forest that the Blue Ridge Parkway snaked through is known as the Cradle of Forestry in the United States. George Vanderbilt - the man who built the Biltmore mansion - owned over 150,000 acres south of Asheville, the vast majority of it forest land. One of the men working for him to help build the Biltmore estate was a young forester by the name of Gifford Pinchot. As a little boy, Pinchot remembered how his father lamented that the timber harvested off their family land wasn't properly replaced. As a young man, Pinchot came up with a plan for reforestation of cut land timber. Vanderbilt hired Pinchot for his ideas of replanting and replenishing the forest after cuts were made for wood used on the estate and for farmland to grow crops.
Pinchot showed Vanderbilt how he could make a profit on the timber cut on the land and with some of the profits he could have trees replanted for future cuts. Much of the conversation efforts of the forest owned by Vanderbilt were implemented by Pinchot and continued after he became the first head of the U.S. Forest Service. After his death in 1914, George Vanderbilt's widow sold much of the family's land to the U.S. National Park Service for less than $5 an acre with the land becoming a large portion of what is now the Pisgah National Forest.
We continued on the way to the Pisgah Inn and beyond before turning around at a vista turnout and heading back toward Asheville. With the stops along the way to look at the magnificent views, it took us just over an hour to go approximately 20 miles.
We decided to stop at the Pisgah Inn to check out the view from there. The Pisgah Inn dates back nearly 100 years when the first buildings were built in 1918. With Mt. Pisgah nearby, it became a popular destination for people looking to relax and get out of the heat of the summer with its 5000 foot elevation. When the Blue Ridge Parkway was completed in both directions from the Pisgah Inn, it became even more of a popular destination after World War II. The existing Pisgah Inn was constructed in the mid-1960's and the original buildings were demolished in 1990 after it was determined they were no longer safe to inhabit. It was getting close to lunch time and they did have a restaurant up there, but we were more interested in heading back to Asheville and going to a place that had some craft beers - my main reason why I wanted to go to Asheville in the first place.
It took us about a half-hour to get back to Asheville as we didn't stop at any of the turn-outs on the way back. Our trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway was absolutely worth the time it took to go up to just past the Pisgah Inn and back. I complained earlier that the view at The Blowing Rock was worth nowhere near the $7.00 per person they charged for it. And after driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway and seeing some of the views up there, the people who own Blowing Rock should be ashamed of themselves. There were some spectacular - and FREE - views along the parkway. It's definitely worth the time and effort to travel the Blue Ridge Parkway if you make it to Asheville.
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