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Super-Scenic Motorway

A Historian’s Blue Ridge Parkway

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Welcome to this portal to Dr. Anne Mitchell Whisnant’s work about the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I originally created this site in 2006 upon publication of my book Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (University of North Carolina Press).

I have continued to work on Parkway history, so in 2018 I expanded this site as a place to collect all of my Parkway work, including:

  • Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway, a major repository of digitized material related to Parkway history. I co-manage this site with the UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries. It includes a set of interpretive essays about Parkway history written by my students and me.
  • When the Parkway Came, a story about the Parkway’s creation written for young readers and those who read to and with them.
  • My post-Scenic writings and presentations: Blog posts I wrote between 2008-10 for Virtual Blue Ridge’s now-defunct Blue Ridge Parkway blog, other articles I’ve written about Parkway history, and several videos and presentations I’ve done about various Parkway or National Parks topics.
  • Links to student projects about Parkway history that my Introduction to Public History classes at UNC-Chapel Hill have built.
  • Links to materials from public presentations I’ve given about Parkway and National Parks history.
  • A timeline of key dates in early Parkway history and a collection of primary documents related to specific issues in Parkway history (timeline coming soon).

I hope this site demonstrates that publication of a book does not necessarily represent the end of one’s work on a historical topic. Especially for someone like me, who has not worked professionally within the university tenure system and therefore has not been under pressure always to move to a “next” project, a single thread of inquiry may extend and evolve organically. To borrow a Parkway metaphor, the book was just one wayside on a longer road.

I continue to read, write, and speak about Blue Ridge Parkway history. If you’d like me to come and speak to your group, here’s how we can set that up.

Recent Posts

  • Black Lives and Whitened Stories in Three North Carolina National Parks November 7, 2021
  • Black History on the Blue Ridge Parkway (Webinar for Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation) June 1, 2021
  • The Transparent Box: The National Park Service and Public History January 29, 2019
  • Georeferenced Historic Maps and the Story of the Blue Ridge Parkway at Grandfather Mountain, NC February 26, 2014
  • Routing the Blue Ridge Parkway, 1934: Using Georeferenced Historic Maps to Visualize the Alternatives February 25, 2014

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