Cumberland Knob: Where the Parkway Was Born

On September eleventh, nineteen thirty-five, the first shovelful of dirt was turned on the Blue Ridge Parkway right here at Cumberland Knob, near the Virginia and North Carolina state line. The New Deal project had been conceived to link Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, and this knob at milepost two seventeen and a half was the chosen starting point.

The Cumberland Knob Recreation Area became the very first facility on the Parkway to open to the public, welcoming picnickers in nineteen thirty-seven even while construction crews were still cutting road through the mountains in both directions. The Parkway would take decades more to complete, with the last section finished only in nineteen eighty-seven near Grandfather Mountain. But it all began here, at a quiet knoll on the Surry and Alleghany County line, where the idea of a road built purely for the pleasure of driving finally broke ground.