One of the most visited units of the National Park Service (NPS), the Blue Ridge Parkway welcomes over 17 million visitors each year — more than twice the combined visitation to Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon national parks.

Nearly 470 miles of road connect Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah national parks as the Blue Ridge Parkway winds its way through the scenic landscape of 29 counties in North Carolina and Virginia. The parkway offers breathtaking views, abundant outdoor recreation, local foods, artisanal galleries and wildlife viewing opportunities. Visitors generate more than $2.3 billion annually for local economies, which creates jobs and sustains a high quality of life for area residents.

Our Role

The Conservation Fund’s efforts to conserve lands along Blue Ridge Parkway date to 1998, when we helped NPS protect more than 8,000 acres of spectacular views, clean waters and recreational opportunities along the parkway.

Since then we’ve helped NPS acquire an additional 2,986 acres of high-elevation spruce forest at Waterrock Knob, the 16th-highest peak in the eastern United States and a major scenic parkway destination near Waynesville, Sylva and Cherokee in North Carolina. Together with lands donated by The Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Trust for North Carolina and the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, a new 5,300-acre park was created in 2016. Waterrock Knob is an ideal spot to watch a sunrise or a sunset and hike to the top of the summit for majestic 50-mile views of the highest peaks in the Smokies.

TCF also conserved an additional 1,000 acres in the Campbell Creek watershed to protect drinking water supplies and wildlife habitat for local populations of black bears, elk, deer, native trout and northern flying squirrels. To date, we have helped protect over 12,000 acres along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

As the parkway celebrated its 75th anniversary, in 2010, the NPS and the state tourism councils of North Carolina and Virginia turned to our Conservation Leadership Network to help build on the momentum of the anniversary and engage communities along the parkway in crafting a vision for the historic roadway’s future.

Working with local partners, we held a three-day workshop in Galax, Virginia, that included representatives from all 29 counties along the parkway. Our goal was to develop a shared vision for the parkway as a cohesive and unifying force that thrives on partnership between NPS and the communities through which the parkway passes.

The steps that these leaders are taking today to strengthen partnerships and plan for the future will ensure the stewardship and conservation of the parkway and its scenic vistas — and sustain the economies and character of its surrounding communities — for the next 75 years and beyond.

Implementing the Vision

Leaders who attended the workshop held by our Conservation Leadership Network generated ideas and developed action plans for the Blue Ridge Parkway’s next 75 years. Projects they are undertaking include:

• Mapping parkway and community trails in order to discover new connections and providing online map resources to visitors;
• Exploring the feasibility of developing “cellular hot spots” along the parkway so smartphone users can access information about the parkway and its surrounding communities;
• Participating in a case study with the America’s Byways Resource Center to document how parkway visitors generate revenue and create jobs throughout the region. This information will be used to bolster local and state support for the parkway, bolster grant applications, inform land-use decisions, strengthen tourism marketing efforts and attract new investments.

Learn More

• National Park Service
• Blue Ridge Parkway Association