National Parks Traveler

Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Ph.D. is a historian and the author of Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History, published in 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. She is an administrator and adjunct associate professor of history and American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she has been since 2009 scholarly advisor for the digital history project Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway(http://docsouth.unc.edu/blueridgeparkway/).

With her husband David Whisnant, Anne also has conducted contract historical research for the National Park Service and other clients through their small firm, Primary Source History Services (http://www.prisource.com). Together, they have written and published the first-ever book for children about the Blue Ridge Parkway, When the Parkway Came (2010) (http://www.whentheparkwaycame.com). From 2008-2012, Anne chaired the team of scholars that researched and wrote the study Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service.Anne is passionate about the National Parks and very concerned that a lost sense of the "public good" is threatening these treasures. She has served on the Board of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation (http://www.brpfoundation.org/) and the southeast regional council of the National Parks Conservation Association.