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 Blue Ridge Community College Arts & Humanities Series will present ‘Creating the Blue Ridge Parkway: Conflict and Compromise Along America’s Favorite Road’ on Monday, October 6 at 7:30 pm. This free presentation will be in the Patton Auditorium on the Henderson County campus.
Historian Anne Whisnant from Durham will discuss how various political and social conflicts shaped the appearance of the Blue Ridge Parkway as much the work of landscape architects and engineers did. Looking at the North Carolina section of the Parkway, she will explore how conflicts over Parkway routing, amount of land to be taken for the road, and Parkway access and use emerged at several points, including Cherokee, Asheville, Little Switzerland, and Grandfather Mountain. Whisnant will show how the resolution of those conflicts determined who would benefit most from the new road and molded the Parkway’s appearance at each spot. In conclusion there will be a discussion of the degree to which Parkway planners were able to implement an overarching vision for the road in the face of local situations that differed all along the Parkway’s 470-mile length. Dr. Whisnant is currently the Project Manager for an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant at Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. Her primary focus has been on the social and cultural history of the Appalachian South during the New Deal period. She is also author of several articles and has presented numerous public talks on the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway. This presentation is sponsored by the Community Enrichment Division in the Continuing Education Department. For any additional questions contact Martha Howell at 694-1743 or at marthah@blueridge.edu. (Image provided by Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway.)
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