Editor’s Note: This column marks the first installment of a two-part series on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

“The Blue Ridge Parkway is the longest road planned as a single unit in the United States, stretching from the lowest point of 649 feet above sea level at Virginia’s James River, to 6,053 feet on Richland Balsam Mountain. It’s also a series of nature preserves, a historical cultural landscape, miles of split-rail fences, and a chain of recreational areas stretching over mountains and valleys for 469 miles.”

“Wal, I been living’ on this hyar mountain well nigh onto eighty yars, and I been wonderin’ what this mountain was fer. Now I know it’s fer to put a road on it,” said a mountaineer to Parkway architect Stanley W. Abbot.

Though it was agreed that property owners would give up a right-of-way 200 feet wide, the 90,000 acres involved weren’t always transferred easily. Restricted access to their own property caused some to hold out until condemnation became necessary. But the Depression’s hardships encouraged turning farmland into cash. In some areas, the “arbitrary measurement” extended boundary lines “beyond cliffs;” in others, 200 feet scarcely contained the Parkway’s construction. Compromise allowed flexibility in land purchases according to the route, adding more in some areas and less in others. A lack of clear deeds and boundaries often complicated matters.

Early on, Depression-driven Works Progress Administration crews cleared land and drilled into rock walls for explosives. Though power equipment was available, using muscle employed more needy workers and fed their hungry families. The going pay averaged just $55 a week, but that was a small fortune to mountainfolk who rarely saw that much cash in a year. Hundreds of Emergency Relief Administration laborers did landscape work in areas set aside for recreation and parks.

The Civilian Conservation Corps established Camp NP-21 at Doughton Park, but most of their work was done around Cumberland Knob. Pay was minimal, and all but five dollars went to the young men’s families. A succession of other camps followed work far into Virginia. When the ERA ran out of money, their crews joined WPA projects. By the start of World War II, more than $20 million had been spent on “170 miles that were open to travel and another 160 miles in some stage of construction.”

The road inched along ponderously, often in both directions as it connected finished segments like links in a chain. Though a third of the construction was finished by the mid-1950’s, the really hard work lay ahead. Twenty-five of the Parkway’s 26 tunnels were bored through North Carolina’s rocky spurs and ridges.

The Parkway’s 168 steel and concrete bridges carry traffic over streams and narrow valleys, while grade-separation structures allow the road to run over or under other roads. Such structures began with stone arch rings, abutments, and spandrel walls defining the tunnel’s curvature. Concrete was then poured over a network of steel reinforcement rods.

Many of these structures display the craftsmanship of Spanish stonemasons, but the rocks’ real purpose was to form and frame the steel and concrete.

The Parkway’s early tunnel-building techniques would leave today’s OSHA inspector slackjawed! First, a wood-timbered, double-decked, truckbed-mounted drilling platform called a “Jumbo” was backed against the rock wall. Men stood on the platforms and drove water-cooled drills horizontally into the rock for about ten feet. A circle of holes was then bored diagonally near the tunnel’s center. The circle was blasted first, clearing space for rubble to collect and be hauled away. Over and over, the pattern would be followed as the reinforced sides and ceiling went deeper and deeper into the remaining rock and out the other side. By the 1960’s, steam drills replaced muscle and determination, while steel replaced the wood framework and braced walls.

The Linville River Bridge was once the Parkway’s largest span, using three huge arches to support the roadway. Unique to this structure is the use of stone from Grandfather Mountain to cover the steel undersides. A quarter-mile long bridge over the Roanoke River, near milepost 115, uses six spans and is the Parkway’s longest steel girder bridge. A nine-span bridge above the James River has concrete girders beneath its thousand-foot length.

The 1,100-foot Linn Cove Viaduct, at milepost 304, stands alone as the longest and longest-delayed section, due to right-of-way problems. Its curving, segmented construction posed huge challenges to designers and builders. In addition, environmental concerns meant working from the bridge down, not from the ground up. The Blue Ridge Parkway HAER Report describes the work:

“The 153 box girder segments were roughly 8’ long, 9’ deep, and 37’ wide, and weighed approximately 50 tons each. The post-tensioned box piers were cast in 30-ton segments match-cast vertically. No two segments had the same dimensions, and only one was straight. The segments were erected on seven drilled microshaft piles; the drilling was the only construction which took place at ground level. The pre-cast piers were then trucked to the cantilevered south end of the structure and lowered into position with a stiffleg crane. The box girder segments were trucked to the edge, swung out, attached to the free end with threaded bars, then stressed and epoxied.” Color was added to the concrete mix so as to blend with the rocks.

Fifty-two years and roughly $130 million — including Linn Cove’s cost of $10 million — were invested in building the Blue Ridge Parkway. At the same time, thousands of men earned enough money to keep their families afloat during the Depression years. Alleghany County holds our portion of this national treasure in trust.