BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY TUNNELS

The legislated purpose of the Blue Ridge Parkway was to link Shenandoa and Great Smokey Mountains National Parks with a road designed for pleasant motoring as well as conserve and interpret the unique natural and cultural resources of the Southern Highlands.  Rather than just a park-to-park connection, the parkway was conceived and planned as an elongated national park providing recreational and park activities.  Traveling the parkway was intended to be a "ride-a-while, stop-a-while" experience complete with scenic pullouts, recreation areas, and visitor contact stations.

In keeping with the design standard of minimizing impacts to the land, tunnels are used in areas of steep terrain with ridges that run perpendicular to the roadway alignment.  Tunnels are used more extensively in North Carolina (twenty-five times) due to more rugged terrain versus Virginia, which has only one tunnel.  The construction of the tunnels was a costly and hazardous part of building the road.  Parkway tunnels were excavated in the pre-war period using compressed air drills and dynamite.  Later, the use of a jumbo rig made it possible to drill and blast an entire tunnel face in one operation.  Tunnel lengths range from 150 feet at Rough Ridge to 1,434 feet at Pine Mountain and all but three have a minimum height of 13 feet.  Lining was first used in the Devil's Courthouse Tunnel due to tunnel cave-ins during construction.  Approximately one quarter of the structure was subsequently lined with concrete.  Acting Superintendent Abbuehl observed a noticeable improvement in lighting on the lined section, a point he felt favored lining of other structures.  An additional benefit was the elimination of much of the moisture entering the tunnels, which caused ice problems in the winter.

Tunnel locations along the Blue Ridge Parkway:

From: "Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Jennifer K. Cuthbertson, 1997 (Sheet 1 of 28) and Lia M. Dikigoropoulou, 1997, (Sheet 24 of 28).

HOME