Blue Ridge Parkway Tunnels - NC

State:: NC
Site Type:: Infrastructure and Utilities, Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels
New Deal Agencies:: Work Relief Programs, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

Description

“Blue Ridge Parkway tunnels consist of a total of 26 vehicle tunnels constructed along the 469 miles (755 km) of the Blue Ridge Parkway. One, the Bluff Mountain Tunnel,^[1] is in Virginia and twenty-five are in North Carolina.^[2]

The design standards specified a minimum impact on the land. The vehicle tunnels were often constructed to reduce excessive landscape scarring that open cuts would have produced. They are used in areas of steep terrain where ridges run perpendicular to the roadway alignment.

North Carolina’s more rugged terrain required the majority of the tunnels. Most of the work on the tunnel digging was done by hand and provided by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.^[3] Little machinery was used with the intention of creating manual labor in depressed economic times”