The Blue Ridge Parkway has approximately 4,000 adjacent landowners. Development of subdivisions along the Parkway is increasing rapidly, especially in agricultural lands of the Plateau and Highlands districts; in the urban corridors of Roanoke and Asheville, whose topographic features are gentle and rolling and conducive to construction; and near the resort communities of Wintergreen, Virginia, and Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where construction on steep slopes or otherwise atypical home sites occur.

Special use permits (SUP) issued in the 1940s and through the 1970s were often utilized to resolve errors and omissions to Parkway deeds. Permitting those uses is now inappropriate under current National Park Service policies and guidelines. Other encroachments have been present for decades, either because they were condoned by the Parkway or simply ignored.

Parkway staff has documented more than 400 encroachments in the form of:

• bushwhack trails from adjacent lands (100+),
• lawns and gardens (100+),
• brush piles (100+),
• private access roads (40),
• destruction of property, including tree/shrub removal (20+),
• buildings and parking areas (40+),
• erosion (averaging 3 per year),
• dumping (10+), and
• signs (25+).

In the past, Parkway staff has provided inconsistent messages to its neighbors, and neighbors generally believe they can use Parkway lands without incident. Parkway management now desires to establish a defendable policy and process that will protect Parkway resources.