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ACQUIRING FARMLAND ALONG THE PARKWAY
The Blue Ridge Parkway continues to acquire land along the 470-mile pleasure road from willing sellers. It does so for two primary reasons, says Land Resources Specialist Sheila Gasperson, who handles the transactions: "to extinguish access to private property, and to protect the scenic view.”
When the parkway was built, it cut through many farms, making it impossible for landowners to get from one part to another except by crossing the parkway. In those cases, rights-of-way were reserved for landowners when they deeded over part of their farms to the parkway. These private farm roads are especially numerous from Roanoke south to the Virginia state line.
So long as the farms remain intact, traffic is limited on them. But when farms are sold and broken into smaller tracts, traffic increases, creating safety hazards. Additionally, the parkway’s boundary – which averages 800 feet (400 feet to either side of the center line) – is narrowest where it runs through Virginia’s agricultural lands, which means that “most of the scenery is privately owned,” Gasperson says. When farms along parkway boundaries are sold, whatever goes up on their open land – tract houses, vacation rentals, trailer parks or trophy houses – impacts parkway views and diminishes the parkway experience for travelers.
“I don’t go out looking for property to protect – or advertise that we are buying land,” Gasperson says. “Usually the landowner comes to me. We go out, look at the property, have it appraised and make an offer. Usually it’s the landowner, occasionally a realtor, who lets us know that a farm along the parkway is about to go on the market.” The parkway not only buys farms like Whit Sizemore’s, where the view is still intact, it purchases farms in areas where development has already occurred, to keep views from being further compromised. In Orchard Gap, it bought the farm across the parkway from a gas station that’s a prominent part of the view; in Volunteer Gap, it has acquired the hayfield across the road from recently constructed vacation cabins.
—EH
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