The Blue Ridge Parkway
Few people know the truth of the identity of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is actually a national park. It is in fact one of the largest - and the longest for sure, of all the massive national parks in the USA park system, stretching for miles through the rolling Blue Ridge mountain range. The Park is not only responsible for the roadway itself, which was created as a scenic route through this part of the country, but it also encompasses many thousands of acres of other land adjacent to the roadway. The Blue Ridge Parkway for example has several thousand acres of wildlife habitat, hotels and campgrounds, and historic cemeteries within its inventory of responsibility, and is considered by many scientists and researchers to be a repository of unlimited plant species that could and probably do hold the answers to most of the “miracle drugs” of the future. Drugs like aspirin, that is considered one of the most important modern medicines, derive from trees like those grown in the Blue Ridge forests, and preserving the parkway and its adjacent forest life is a great challenge to those who work as stewards of the parkway.
Dan Brown is the head of the park, as the Chief Park Ranger for the Blue Ridge Parkway, and he says that his two biggest challenges in that role are development and air quality, because many short sighted developers want to cut into the forests and erect condos and hotels, and traffic along the parkway and nearby highways creates deadly air pollution that threatens the fragile ecosystem. But he says that the biggest pleasure of the job is the feedback he gets from tourists who visit the parkway and find it one of the greatest travel destinations on earth.