FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway

What happens to a national park when visitors love it to death? That was the question on the minds of Blue Ridge Parkway officials and civic leaders following the 50th anniversary celebration of the Parkway in 1987. During that celebration, more than 23 million travelers showed up to enjoy the world’s longest parkway.
What had become known as “America’s Favorite Scenic Drive” was literally being loved to death by the tremendous onslaught of visitors for which the National Park Service (NPS) was ill prepared and certainly could not afford to support. The location of the Blue Ridge Parkway, 469 miles stretching from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to the iconic Great Smoky Mountain town of Cherokee in western North Carolina, placed it within a day’s drive of half the population of the United States.

By 1987, it seemed that the entire population was packing their cars and picnic baskets and heading out for the Parkway. Funding to meet the growing demands of increased visitation to the Parkway (and other national parks around the country) was becoming an annual challenge for the Parkway Superintendent.

The result was that national parks across the US had to do more, with less. Services such as ranger interpretive programs, road maintenance and the expansion of visitor programs and facilities were at risk.

The NPS began to look for ways to meet these challenges by connecting with nearby communities and visitors who loved the Parkway. This same approach was used nationwide and the “friends of parks” movement began. Non-profit groups formed and organized around the singular idea of befriending their favorite parks.

FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway was organized in 1988 as a membership-based organization to provide the funds for special NPS Parkway projects and volunteers to take on many of the jobs that the NPS could no longer afford to support. It was felt that the organization and its members could be a catalyst for ensuring the preservation, conservation, and enhancement of the Parkway that brings so many visitors to its bordering communities. FRIENDS focused on being the link between Parkway visitors and those communities, empowering the communities to become involved in Parkway projects. Today, FRIENDS has established [insert_php]echo NUMBER_CHAPTERS;[/insert_php] community-based Chapters along the Blue Ridge Parkway and is one of the largest FRIENDS groups in the United States.

Interestingly, the use of volunteers working for the Parkway harks back to its very formation and the way its construction began in 1935. The idea of constructing a rural mountain roadway through numerous, isolated communities was a ‘make work’ project under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” plan for social and economic progress. The project employed men from the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), an innovative, federally funded organization that put thousands of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits.

As federal funding to the National Park system has continued to decline, the need for FRIENDS is even stronger today than when it was founded. Every member and volunteer plays an active role. Please consider becoming part of FRIENDS and helping us to ensure the Parkway’s beauty remains to be visited and appreciated by future generations.

FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and an official National Park Service (NPS) partner of the Blue Ridge Parkway.