The Blue Ridge Parkway

Super-Scenic Motorway is a book by Anne Mitchell Whisnant that was released this month from the University of NC Press. It's a history of the Blue Ridge Parkway. But not the normal history you typically hear: a public works project developed in the 1930s to help combat the unemployment of the Great Depression. While that is true, it's also implies a clean positive process that is quite sanitized.

I bring this up because Eminent Domain is one of my pet peeves. Eminent domain is a power that governments wield to acquire real estate for the completion of public projects such as roads, such as was the case with the Blue Ridge Highway, although sometimes eminent domain is used to facilitate the transfer of property from individuals to commercial developers. You can read about that sort of thing in this CBS 60 Minutes article about the abuses of eminent domain.

In 1991 when Whisnant first began to do research into the formation of the Blue Ridge Highway she was a graduate student at UNC. At first all she found was the typical feel-good type history that you often find in PR material. However from materials archived from the 1930s in various libraries Whisnant began to get a more complete picture of what actually happened. Her book is a description of the economics and politics that were involved in getting 80,000 acres of land out of public and private hands and how the highway was formed.

There's nothing very sinister here. But there was more controversy at the time of land appropriation and highway construction than current histories of the scenic Blue Ridge Highway would have you believe. Some people didn't want to sell their land, others objected to the highway for reasons of safety or Tribal identity. The lands appropriated by the Federal Government went through regions historically populated by the Cherokee Tribe. And there's also the economic storm that naturally occurs when a good deal of Federal money moves into an area that is quite impoverished.

I grew up in a rural area in which a huge highway project came though so this book really hits close to home with me. My Father's family used to run a motel and their business was hit hard by the change in driving pattern and they also had a good deal of land confiscated by means of eminent domain. I can only imagine just how huge an effect the Blue Ridge Highway development and construction would have on rural Appalachian areas. While there were no doubt many people that were benefited by this process--I'm quite sure many others were harmed. This book tells that story.