Tye River Gap
Cyclists in Virginia may occasionally see a specialized license plate on cars with the title: Blue Ridge Parkway. The license depicts a series of mountain ranges in shades of blue with a sky in varying shades of pale yellow. A silvery thread winds its way along the tops of the mountains, leading to the highest range and beyond into a brilliant sunset. Cyclists riding the twenty seven miles where Route 76 is on the Blue Ridge Parkway will have a physical experience of the sentiments invoked by the image on this license plate. The road sweeps gently along the ridge, with low stone walls and cultivated grasses providing a buffer. The valleys drop below on both sides of the ridge, with even the closest buildings and roads seeming far away. The Tye River Gap is a mountain pass where Route 76 travels along the Blue Ridge Parkway, offering stunning views into the adjoining valley. A sign indicates that the “crest of the Blue Ridge” is nearly 3000 feet of elevation. The road connecting the Blue Ridge Parkway to the valley below, near the town of Vesuvius, marks a change in elevation of nearly 1500 feet in just under four miles, an average grade of 7%, with some sections even steeper. At this moment, eastbound riders will discover (perhaps to their dismay) that the four miles leading up the Blue Ridge Parkway is the steepest climb on Route 76, including many sections in the Rocky Mountains and Cascades, where the elevation is higher but the gradient is more gradual.
Welcome to episode 15 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the Tye River Gap, located just over 350 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 200 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.
The Blue Ridge Parkway climbs up and down hills, but at a measured gradient that is far more gradual than the steep roads that provide access to the parkway. The routes that bring cyclists to the Parkway, including the climb at Afton mountain in the north and at Vesuvius in the south, are far steeper with sharper turns than the Parkway itself. In other words, the Blue Ridge Parkway provides an experience of being in nature while using engineering to arrange for a carefully managed experience of the natural world. This episode explores the Blue Ridge Parkway as an example of a twentieth century practice of engineering the experience of nature to make it accessible to people and their automobiles.
Virginia has two major roads that deliberately bring people, in their cars, into nature. The Blue Ridge Parkway extends from North Carolina through southwestern Virginia to the endpoint at Rockfish Gap. Immediately across the gap, the Skyline Drive travels to the north through Shenandoah National Park almost as far as Maryland.
The Skyline Drive was built first, and the success of this route inspired construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Planning for Skyline Drive began soon after the federal government established Shenandoah as the first National Park in the eastern United States. The designation and construction of this park resulted in the displacement of many families already living in this land, which was justified in the name of progress and development. The construction of a roadway was always intended as the centerpiece of this park, as the growing popularity of the automobile was seen as an opportunity to bring more Americans into contact with the natural environment. The planning committee called for a “sky-line drive along the mountain top, following a continuous ridge and looking down westerly on the Shenandoah valley…and also commanding a view of the Piedmont Plain stretching easterly to the Washington Monument.”
Even as the Skyline drive was being constructed, plans for the Blue Ridge Parkway began to take shape at the same time that the Great Depression began a new era of federal investment in public projects to spur economic recovery and generate construction jobs. In 1933, at President Roosevelt’s urging, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes promoted the idea of a “park to park” highway to connect the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Under pressure from leaders of the city of Asheville, the route was adjusted to begin in this city as a way to promote tourism and economic development. The largest city in southwestern Virginia, Roanoke, was also on the route. Most of the drive, however, was far away from cities and towns. Federal agencies, including the Works Progress Administration, Emergency Relief Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps, coordinated the construction during the New Deal era. Nearly 170 miles were constructed before the war began, with further efforts in the 1950s and 1960s leading to the current route of 469 miles through North Carolina and Virginia.
Communities and families were also displaced by the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The federal government used the power of eminent domain to claim land owned by families who farmed and lived along the route desired by families. For decades, descendents of these families sought some recognition for their losses. Only in the last decade has the National Park Service and related organizations acknowledged how the construction of these two routes involved the displacement of families and communities.
The two parkways share a similar history, purpose, and topography, but they have one notable difference. Skyline drive is located entirely within a national park, so access is controlled and no private residents or businesses are allowed within park territory. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a national park only along the route, which means that private residences and even businesses are located relatively close to the parkway. In addition, the Parkway allows free access, without the fees associated with a National Park. In some areas, crossing the Blue Ridge Parkway is part of daily transportation in communities, even if commercial vehicles are prohibited from using the Parkway.
The design of the Parkway was intended to provide visitors with a carefully managed vision of nature. Routes over mountains, the location of overlooks, and even the stone walls along the roadway were deliberately constructed to enhance drivers’ visions of the Blue Ridge. Administrative offices along the Parkway were located off the main route and usually at lower elevations so the views of these buildings did not interfere with the visitors’ experience. Access to the Parkway is controlled in ways that do not disrupt or obstruct the experience of drivers passing over road crossings.
The National Park Service claims that the Blue Ridge Parkway delivers economic benefits to surrounding communities, with millions of visitors bringing infusions of money that support local businesses and create jobs in so-called “gateway communities.” Most of this business activity and thus related employment is located in obvious sectors, including lodging, restaurants, and fuel, which indicate the transient nature of the park visitors.
Cyclists who follow the two access routes to the Blue Ridge Parkway in the south or north may be surprised by these claims of economic benefits. On Afton mountain, where the Blue Ridge Parkway begins, several abandoned buildings, which once featured a hotel and restaurant, have been dormant for years, despite efforts to renovate these businesses and offer services. At Tye River Gap, where Route 76 leaves the Parkway, cyclists will encounter only one hotel and one small general store and restaurant for more than twenty miles, when the route reaches the city of Lexington. In other words, the economic benefits associated with proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway are concentrated in cities, resorts, and other locations in position to serve the needs of visitors. Local communities appear to benefit little from proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway, in part because the purpose and design of this road is to keep visitors away from the actual communities where people live and work.
For eastbound cyclists on Route 76, the Blue Ridge Parkway is most closely associated with the climb from Vesuvius to Tye River Gap.
An anonymous rider posting about the trip in an online journal declared the ride from Vesuvius to be the “longest, hardest, steepest climb” of the entire transcontinental ride. This rider reported that the average grade was 10%, with sections closer to 15%. Yet this same rider recorded the rewards of this climb: “Don’t get me wrong, I loved every painful turn of the pedal. I was going to make it to the top and I knew it. I never doubted it. The weather was cool, there were almost no cars, and all that I could hear was my breathing and an occasional bird. It was wonderful!”
An English couple riding a tandem bicycle offered a similar account of the climb, which they completed in autumn: “We know that today will be a challenge with the tough climb up Vesuvius to tackle that will bring us onto the final ridge of the Appalachians…We need to get our minds ready for the challenge ahead and … we swing onto the foot of the climb. It quickly steepens into double digit gradients as I work down through the gears to find our granny ring. We grind, grunt and gasp for 5 [kilometers]. The fire in our lungs is matched by the intensity of colour all around us. The road sweeps up to the sky through a towering forest that is now resplendent in all the shades of autumn. The experience is an intense assault on the senses as our legs scream for mercy while we blink sweat out of our eyes to take in more of the surrounding view.”
Almost fifty years ago, a pair of riders from Ohio reported a similar mix of emotions on exactly the same climb: “We climbed our last mountain — from Vesuvius, Va., to the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is supposed to be the toughest climb on the trail — over four miles up with grades of over 10 per cent. Our group was so ‘psyched up’ that I think we could have climbed Mt. Everest! All of us were to the top in no time, and no one had to walk. From the Blue Ridge Parkway, we were actually looking down on towns in the valley to the east and west.”
These first-hand accounts of the relationship between the Blue Ridge Parkway and the surrounding region are representative of the key themes of this episode. The natural environment is spectacular to observe and challenging to experience, as indicated in the exertion needed to complete the climb. Reaching the Blue Ridge Parkway is a relief not only in physical terms, but also more generally for the sense: the air is clean, the traffic is limited, the views are spectacular. Yet this transition from the valley to the ridge is somewhat deceptive, because the experience of traveling through a sculpted and managed nature is achieved only by distancing travelers from spaces where people actually live and work. The fact that the physical experience of cycling to Tye River Gap and riding along the Blue Ridge Parkway has changed so little in almost fifty years is suggestive of both the success of this experiment in managed recreation and a failure to acknowledge how little this Park also connects to the surrounding communities, at least in the more remote sections away from tourist services.
You have been listening to episode 15 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the Tye River Gap, located just over 350 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 200 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible from the homepage for this podcast.
