Adventures on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Posted on by Margaret Williams

One morning a few months ago, I found this 1970s Blue Ridge Parkway map lying on the dining room table. I shouldn’t have been surprised: My mother keeps just about everything, and she produced this old map after rummaging through some of her things. The map’s taped together along some of the torn seams, but it’s otherwise a priceless throw-back to a time that’s passed. And yet…

This Parkway map was published by The Missouri Map Company in Sarasota, Florida, and cost a mere 50 cents. It covers all 469 miles of the scenic “Vacationland” route, as well as the 103-mile Skyline Drive that winds through the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

Many of the attractions it lists remain — from Crabtree Meadows to the swinging bridge at Grandfather Mountain, or the Tweetsie Railroad and Mount Pisgah. But the clothing styles… totally retro.

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About Margaret Williams
Editor Margaret Williams first wrote for Xpress in 1994. An Alabama native, she has lived in Western North Carolina since 1987 and completed her Masters of Liberal Arts & Sciences from UNC-Asheville in 2016. Follow me @mvwilliams
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4 thoughts on “Adventures on the Blue Ridge Parkway”

  3. Margaret Williams

    slow news day? Probably.

    viewable image? How so? Alas, I don’t have a mega-scanner on hand to digitalize the entire map….

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