Editor’s Note (October 2024): We love and celebrate our mountain communities; however, following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, many areas remain inaccessible for travel. Please check DriveNC.gov’s travel map for the latest on traveling to these areas.

Before she spoke her first word or took her first step, Tracy Swartout traveled the beloved road that would one day be entrusted to her care. “Even before I was born, my dad hauled my mom up and down the parkway,” she says with a laugh.

Though she grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, Swartout’s North Carolina roots run deep. As a young adult, she spent time attending Montreat College. She was married in Henderson County. She did postgraduate work at Duke University. But the time she spent on the parkway as a teenager forged her most enduring connection to the Tar Heel State, as she escaped the heat of Columbia to pick apples and pumpkins in the mountains. “The parkway was the way to get there,” she recalls. “All of us in the Galaxie 500, just kind of kickin’ it.”

When Tracy Swartout was named superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2021, she became the first woman to oversee the 469-mile road, the most visited site in the national park system. photograph by Tim Robison

Many park service employees take assignments far from where they grew up. Swartout is no different, having served at national parks in Utah and Washington State, among others. But a fortunate few are able to return to care for places they’ve loved for a lifetime. In the spring of 2021, Swartout was named the first female superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Her elevation to the post was a homecoming. “All of those trips are woven into my life,” she says. “Even now, I’ll pull into an overlook that I had never registered the name of, and I’ll get there and think, ‘This feels familiar. Oh wait, I sat under that tree as a kid.’”

Whether you take it as a joyride or part of your daily commute, the Blue Ridge Parkway plays a cherished role in the lives of North Carolinians. photograph by J SMILANIC/DAWNFIRE PHOTOGRAPHY

The sense of belonging that she has experienced threads its way through every mile of the parkway and through every memory of the millions of people who visit it each year. That’s because, in reality, the parkway belongs to all.

It belongs to the larkspur and the jack-in-the-pulpit, the bee balm and the trillium. It belongs to the black bear, the wild turkey, the peregrine falcon. It belongs to the Cherokee, who first called these mountains Shaconage — Land of the Blue Smoke. It belongs to the alpenhorn player who serenades visitors at the Buck Spring Gap Overlook, and to the yawning cyclists who begin their morning rides in the darkness to catch spectacular sunrises at Sleepy Gap. It belongs to the day hikers on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail that hugs the parkway like an old friend for about 300 miles, and to the vacationing Floridians who regard the cool alpine air at Mount Mitchell as something akin to a miracle.

• • •

“The Scenic,” as the parkway was originally referred to by locals in the 1930s, grew out of a Depression-era initiative to link Shenandoah National Park with Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The 469-mile roadway represented a massive undertaking, requiring cooperation among local, state, and federal governments and myriad stakeholders with sometimes competing interests — tourism leaders, Indigenous people, rural landowners, and conservationists.

Ninety years later, the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation continues knitting together the park’s many stakeholders into a permanent tapestry of cooperation and collaboration. In 2023, the foundation, which serves as the parkway’s nonprofit partner, launched the first listening session of Blue Ridge Rising, a yearlong project that brought together leaders from all of the counties through which the parkway passes.

As CEO of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation — the parkway’s nonprofit partner — Carolyn Widner Ward helps unite people around the common goal of protecting “America’s Favorite Drive.” photograph by Tim Robison

“Blue Ridge Rising is the first-ever endeavor since the parkway came into existence [in which] an effort has been made to unify the 29 counties to create a regional voice,” says Carolyn Widner Ward, CEO of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation.

While many of America’s national parks honor a specific place — like Mount Rainier or Crater Lake — the Blue Ridge Parkway stitches together a vast geological expanse stretching across some of the oldest mountains in the world. As a result, it’s impossible to talk about a park hundreds of miles long without discussing the unique challenges that it presents and the connections that are required to protect its hallmark feature: the astonishing views afforded by 272 overlooks.

“Visitors come for the views, but we don’t own the views,” Ward says. “The parkway’s viewsheds are owned by the adjacent communities, including the 4,700 park neighbors who have land that touches the parkway.”

That’s why engaging those neighbors in the protection of the parkway is so important. The southern Appalachian Mountains that are home to the parkway represent one of the most biodiverse places in the temperate world. “There are more species of trees here than in all of Europe,” Ward says. “It’s the storehouse of our history and culture. It’s an economic engine for our mountain towns.”

At 6,273 feet in elevation, the summit of Waterrock Knob is the highest point on the parkway, known for its panoramic views, spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and “mile-high” visitor center. photograph by Tom Moors

Ward’s role as parkway advocate comes naturally. Like it did for Swartout, the parkway served as the scenic backdrop to her childhood in southwest Virginia. And it represents a homecoming for Ward, too.

In 2006, she had earned her doctorate in forestry and was teaching at Humboldt State University in California. During a birthday party for her 3-year-old daughter, she invited the children to sit down outside near a creek. “Their parents ran to their cars to get blankets to put on the ground so their kids wouldn’t have to sit in the grass,” Ward says. The disconnect between those children and the natural world stuck with her. “I realized I couldn’t tell my students they could change the world if I wasn’t willing to try.”

Within months, she moved to North Carolina and took a job with the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation to start a new program called Kids in Parks. Sixteen years later, it has helped 1.8 million children fall in love with the outdoors and is one of the foundation’s signature programs.

• • •

More than 1,200 individuals participated in Blue Ridge Rising — including elected officials, community leaders, environmentalists, engaged citizens, and landowners — resulting in 69 strategies to protect America’s most popular park, improve the visitor experience, provide educational experiences, and promote the parkway’s gateway communities.

Unlike so many of the country’s “pilgrimage parks,” where a visit might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, visitors return to the Blue Ridge Parkway again and again, thanks to its vast reach along the Eastern Seaboard, linking dozens of mountain communities along the way.

Which is one of the reasons Ward is such a big fan of Superintendent Swartout. “This park is different,” Ward says. “This is our home. This is our backyard. Because of that, the sense of ownership people have is very different. It takes a special superintendent to understand that.”

The long, reverential silence spoke volumes about a shared love for the parkway.

It’s also why Ward was thrilled to have people like Becky Anderson participating in Blue Ridge Rising. Anderson was raised on a farm in Canton and spent her career advocating for western North Carolina through a variety of initiatives, including HandMade in America, a groundbreaking nonprofit that celebrates the art and craft of the mountains. Her passion for Appalachia is matched only by her love for the parkway.

“I grew up with picnics on Sundays on the parkway,” she remembers. “Fried chicken and Coca-Cola in those small glass bottles.”

The parkway also served as the backdrop for two other unforgettable memories. Anderson’s late husband, Ed, proposed to her at Craggy Gardens. And it’s where her older brother, Fred, gave his then 8-year-old sister her first haircut. While riding in the back of the family’s pickup truck, he convinced her to let him cut off her pigtails. Anderson took the dramatic haircut in stride. But her mom didn’t. “I thought she was going to kill him,” she says with a laugh.

Fortunately, the mischievous Fred was spared. Dissuaded from a career in barbering, Anderson’s brother, Fred Chappell, went on to become an acclaimed writer, beloved professor, and the poet laureate of North Carolina.

Those kinds of experiences are shared by North Carolinians from across the state. At a recent Earth Day celebration at the Craggy Gardens Picnic Area, Gov. Roy Cooper recalled how his family made multiple treks to the parkway from their home in Nash County.

“I came up here to toast our anniversary,” the man said. “This was her favorite place on the parkway.”

“Several times when we were small, our parents would take us on a slow ride up the Blue Ridge Parkway, and my brother and I would get to choose where to stop,” he said. “What was amazing to me — especially as someone having grown up in eastern North Carolina, where things are pretty flat — was to see these mountain vistas. As a child, it was a special time for me.”

After being introduced at the event, Governor Cooper did something unusual for a politician: He seized the moment by not speaking. Reaching the podium, he invited the audience to listen with him and take in the surrounding beauty. The long, reverential silence that followed, broken only by a breeze stirring the branches of the surrounding birch and beech trees, spoke volumes about a shared love for the parkway and a commitment to its protection.

For Ward, one memory in particular represents what the parkway means to so many. One day, she was enjoying the views from the Pounding Mill Overlook near Brevard. She saw an older gentleman who had set out two chairs and a picnic in front of him. “He had a bottle of wine and two wineglasses,” Ward says. “I kept looking around to see if there was someone else.” She eventually struck up a conversation with him and learned that the man’s wife had died. “I just came up here to toast our anniversary,” he told Ward. “This was her favorite place on the parkway.”

• • •

For some, of course, the parkway is a pilgrimage park. This spring, Janet Botnen and Ron Schillinger kicked off a road trip in Washington State, where they reunited with the Chevy Silverado that they had ferried the year before from their home on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. By the time they reached the Tanbark Ridge Overlook near Asheville in late May, they’d been on the road for almost a month, traveling more than 6,000 miles.

During their travels, they’d covered just about every inch of the North Carolina section of the parkway. Prior to the trip, Botnen and Schillinger had examined their Blue Ridge Parkway map and drawn circles around every spot they wanted to see, creating a scenic string of pearls familiar to many: Mount Jefferson. Cascade Falls. Grandfather Mountain. Linville Falls. Mount Mitchell. Craggy Dome. Graveyard Fields. Cherokee.

Schillinger’s standout memory is Mount Mitchell. “I wanted to go to the highest point east of the Rockies,” he says. “What an opportunity to be able to drive to within 300 yards of the top!” Looking out over the view of Lane Pinnacle and Cattail Peak, Schillinger sums up the opinion of many parkway visitors: “It doesn’t get better than this.”

An easy hike to the summit of Craggy Pinnacle offers views of Pisgah National Forest draped in fall foliage, Craggy Dome across the way, and the Blue Ridge Parkway meandering through it all. photograph by Steven McBride

As for Swartout, when it comes to her favorite places on the parkway, the superintendent has many from which to choose. She enjoys hiking up to Craggy Pinnacle on foggy days. She’s inspired by the Cherokee history at Waterrock Knob and the restoration projects that have taken place there. But she’s also grown particularly fond of a place just a short distance from her office: the Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor Center at Milepost 384, near Asheville. “I love it because it’s the gateway for people who’ve never visited,” she says.

As the caretaker for America’s most visited park, Swartout has a very simple message to share. “I would like for all people to know that they have a role to play in the stewardship of this place,” she says. “People protect what they know about and care about.”

She could very well be reflecting on her own role as superintendent. Which is something for which every North Carolinian can be thankful.

Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor Center
195 Hemphill Knob Road
Asheville, NC 28803
(828) 348-3400
nps.gov/blri

Click here to take a spin along the Blue Ridge Parkway with the British Car Club of WNC.