|
THE PARKWAY’S CHESTNUT RAIL FENCES:
ICONS BECOME EYESORES IF NOT MAINTAINED
One of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s most distinctive design features is its wood rail fences. They define boundaries of large open fields; contain grazing cattle; emphasize long sweeping curves and the alignment of the roadway; and provide an accent feature in developed areas. The fences were originally constructed of chestnut – a wood with many virtues to recommend it. It was abundantly available, highly resistent to decay, and split easily into long straight rails of remarkable uniformity.
The parkway borrowed its fence designs from mountain farmers, who employed a variety of fence types depending on use and terrain. The overwhelming majority of the parkway’s wood fences are of a type known as “Virginia stake and rail” – double posts set into the ground and spaced 9 feet apart, with 10-foot long rails stacked between them. The second most common type, the “snake” or “worm” fence, was easily constructed by stacking rails in a zig-zag pattern. Cattle grazing in rough, uneven terrain were confined behind “saw buck” fences. And picket fences – each picket sharpened to a point – were erected to keep the chickens from flying up onto them and into the garden.
Parkway designer Stanley Abbott and the landscape architects who followed him valued the parkway’s wood fencing as a visual design element; parkway visitors hold the fences in similarly high esteem. According to a draft of a "Wood Rail and Wire Fence Management Plan" currently under review, “The 20 million visitors to the park consistenly rate views that include wood rail fencing to be superior. The absence of these fences and their poor condition drastically affect the visitor’s experience.”
Parkway officials recognize the importance of retaining the wood rail fencing and keeping it in good repair. But shrinking budgets and reduced maintenance staffs – and the disappearance of the once ubiquitous chestnut – have made that more difficult with every passing year, says BRP resident landscape architect Larry Hultquist, who authored the management plan. A good deal of parkway wood fencing has already been lost. An inventory conducted in 2002 determined that 114,288 linear feet (or 21.65 miles) of it remains – and that nearly a third of it needs to be replaced. To preserve “the original design intent of the parkway,” Hultquist says, approximately 85,000 linear feet of the fencing must remain in place and be maintained.
Some fence can be removed from areas where it no longer serves its original purpose – where reforestation has eliminated formerly open land, or where visible residential and commercial development has rendered the historic fencing anachronistic. Salvaged rails from those areas can be used to repair fencing where it is visually important. But the life expectancy for chestnut rails is about 30 years, and much of the current inventory has been in place far longer than that. Buying more chestnut for fencing is impractical if not impossible; when it can be found, it’s prohibitively expensive. Locust, the only viable natural substitute – it’s decay resistant and relatively plentiful – can be used for posts, but doesn’t split well into rails. Man-made substitutes currently on the market – recycled plastic wood and fibrous concrete made to look like wood – each have drawbacks that make them unacceptable. “Our challenge,” Hultquist says, “is how to keep maintaining our chestnut rail fences – a parkway icon – when there’s no chestnut left.”
—EH
+Back to Feature |
