ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 26, 1996 TAG: 9611260091
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
AMONG THE nation's loveliest and most historic roadways, its National Scenic Byways, is a short list of six with the new designation of All-American Roads. Here they are: (1) Route 1 Pacific Coast Highway, California; (2) San Juan Skyway, Colorado; (3) Selma to Montgomery March Byway, Alabama; (4) Trail Ridge Road/Beaver Meadow Road, Colorado; (5) Natchez Trace Parkway, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.
And (6) the Blue Ridge Parkway - North Carolina portion only.
Whoa! North Carolina portion only? But the 470-mile road that flies across the upper plateaus and ribbons around the mountainsides of the Blue Ridge lies in North Carolina and Virginia.
What folly of the Federal Highway Administration is this, that the Virginia portion should be excluded?
None, as it turns out.
Virginia declined the honor, at least for now.
The National Park Service, which manages the federal parkway, nominated the entire stretch as an All-American Road under a national program that identifies the best of the best of the National Scenic Byways. The six roads selected are considered not just pretty drives that motorists might choose in getting from place to place, but destinations in themselves: part of the American story, national historic landmarks laid down in asphalt.
Not only is such an appellation richly deserved for all of the parkway, it should be coveted. The designation is sure to appear on road maps, and be included in tourism information. The Blue Ridge Parkway is an All-American Road, visitors will see - but only the North Carolina portion. The Virginia portion, they will be left to assume, must be inferior in some way.
Why? Because of fears of - what else? - federal intrusion. The Virginia Department of Transportation, leery of possible restrictions on the property rights of neighboring landowners, has asked the park service first to hold public hearings and get the approval of every Virginia jurisdiction through which the parkway runs.
North Carolina, meanwhile, readily concurred with the designation, apparently because its officials understood and accepted park-service assurances that the required corridor-management plan for an All-American Road is, essentially, in place for the parkway, which was, after all, designed and built to be a scenic drive.
Phase one of that plan has to do with managing the corridor that the federal government owns. But phase two concerns how to address the scenic quality of the route outside the parkway's boundaries. An opening, perhaps, for federal land-use restrictions?
No, a parkway official says. The National Park Service plan for phase two is to work with localities along the parkway to identify the land that can be seen from the road. It would inventory the viewshed. Deciding whether and how to protect it would be left to somebody else. Shouldn't we want to do this anyway?
The park service is planning to hold hearings and gather support for the All-American Road, as the state has asked, and possibly nominate Virginia's part of the parkway in late March.
Godspeed.
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