The Blue Ridge Parkway was designed to maximize scenic views and give visitors the impression that they are in a park with boundaries to the horizon. This scenic motor road has some 500,000 acres of view area scenery within a two-mile wide and 469 mile-long corridor that traverses 29 counties – 12 in Virginia and 17 in North Carolina. Two-thirds of the 1,200 mountainside and rural farm landscape Parkway views are owned by private landowners and the other one-third are on U.S. Forest Service land.

The elongated nature of the Parkway results in a huge adjacent lands interface. There are over 4,000 adjacent landowners having some deed reserved rights on Parkway lands – most with private road access, some with water rights or utility rights-of-way – all of which are administered by Parkway staff. There are another 500 permitted utility rights-of-way, 450 agricultural leases, and some 21,000 acres of scenic easements being managed by Parkway staff.

Visitors spend over $2 billion annually in communities adjacent to the Parkway and visitors surveyed indicate that the primary reason they travel the Parkway is for recreation and viewing scenery. A 2002-2003 visitor survey found that 25 percent of visitor respondents said they would change where they visit the Parkway if scenic quality declined and others said they would completely stop visiting affected sections of the Parkway. There appears to be a direct correlation between negative land-use changes and the potential for reduced visitor spending in counties where the scenic quality of views is diminished.

Land-use changes in the 29 counties the Parkway traverses are dramatically altering the quality of view areas as seen from some 1,242 Parkway roadside and overlook vistas. There is no routine contact with county officials by Parkway staff in 28 of the 29 counties to jointly work on land-use planning and controls. Parkway staff are only able to address land-use changes on a case-by-case basis and only then on the projects that would most impact Parkway scenic, natural, cultural, and/or recreational resources.