Wow, what an amazing collection of historical and contemporary photographs. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a 469-mile road from Shenandoah National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that follows the crest of the Blue Ridge through Western Virginia and North Carolina and functions as part of the National Park Service. There are no billboards or other commercial enterprises within the often-extensive Parkway right-of-way, and the pastoral and scenic views are spectacular. This book and its photographs mostly show the people of the area through which the Parkway winds, along with some scenery and buildings, and a few shots of road construction and completion. Historic photos by Arthur Rothstein and Bayard Wooten, mostly taken before the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway began in 1935, highlight the first chapter, but historic photographs can be found throughout. The first Parkway milepost signs were erected in 1941, and then World War II slowed progress even further. By 1968 all construction was completed except for a final seven-mile stretch on the side of Grandfather Mountain. That section was completed in 1987 with construction of the Linn Cove Viaduct that allows wildlife to pass under the roadway. Amy Waters Yarsinske is the author of over 80 non-fiction books. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia.
Columbia, South Carolina: Fonthill Media/Arcadia Publishing, 2018. 249 pages with a Select Bibliography, Endnotes, and color and/or black-and-white photographs on most of the pages. Trade paperback, $28.99.