The Blue Ridge Parkway is an extremely fragile linear national park with an annual visitation of nearly 20 million visitors. The Parkway was built within a varying width right-of-way, which provides an insulating park area between the Parkway motor road and abutting private property. While the Parkway’s right-of-way width averages 800 feet – 400 feet on either side of the motor road center line – it can be as narrow as 400 feet in total width.

What once was an undeveloped and scenic mountainside and rural landscape Parkway corridor is now changing dramatically. Major rural farmland sections of the Parkway in southwestern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina are threatened by resort, second home, and retirement residential development in areas that once were pastures. In North Carolina alone 75 percent of farm lands have changed use since 1948. Parkway agricultural scenes have changed from crops and cattle to hay and Christmas tree farms.

The Blue Ridge Parkway will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2010, a focal point around which to create public support to preserve lands and interests in lands. The 75th Anniversary is an opportunity to build public awareness of the Parkway’s significance and its fragility. It’s an opportunity to involve local communities in generating common sense solutions to protecting a scenic land base that results in Parkway visitors spending more than $2 billion in local communities annually. There is a chance to spotlight the Blue Ridge Parkway beyond its borders, bringing state and national attention to efforts to preserve the Parkway.

A coalition of land trusts in North Carolina and Virginia, headed by the Conservation Trust for North Carolina , are requesting that Congress provide $75 million over a five-year period for the purchase of targeted lands or conservation easements with willing landowners along the Parkway before land prices become prohibitive.