The approximately 15 million visitors expected this year on the Blue Ridge Parkway—the most visited unit of the national park system—will find fewer ranger-led walks and talks, reduced facilities at campgrounds, picnic areas, and visitor centers, and perhaps a shorter full-service season. Superintendent Phil Francis says the goal is limiting the impact on visitors.
Over the next week or so Comet PannSTARRS will be visible near the moon after sunset in Asheville and along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Bundle up and head outside at dusk. Although not visible with the naked-eye, it isn’t hard to find with an average pair of binoculars.
In a reversal of seventy years of “vigorously suppressed” fires on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Superintendent Phil Francis has announced that 150 acres will be burned near Doughton Park “to return the site to a more natural vegetation type” and “increase the quality of wildlife habitat.”
Fewer rangers for search-and-rescue missions, closed campgrounds, and possibly more devastating forest fires are facing the National Park Service as a result of the looming budget fiasco, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said Monday.
History buffs and students working on a class report are among potential users of a website that features cultural landscapes in the National Park System. Not with familiar the term "cultural landscapes"? This site can help fill in the gaps.
After more than 75 years—many of them passed as the most visited unit of the National Park System—the Blue Ridge Parkway has announced the release of its very first Final General Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement.
Winter's been slow coming to the Blue Ridge but its been worth the wait. This family found an empty meadow and built a snowman near Blowing Rock—while hundreds of other folks tackled a nearby sledding hill. Grandfather Mountain rises in the distance. Photo by Randy Johnson.
The Southern Appalachian Handicraft Guild has run the Parkway’s Folk Art Center in Asheville since 1979 and that record continues with the organization gaining another 10-year lease on the property.
Following an unsuccessful attempt to drum up interest in several commercial properties on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the National Park Service has extended the submission date and issued a revised and scaled-down prospectus.