Skyline Drive

Roll down the window and listen. Tires hum softly on the asphalt. Somewhere below, a crow calls across the hollow. The air up here is cooler than the valley you just left. It smells of oak leaves, damp stone, and a faint trace of woodsmoke drifting up from farms far below. This is Skyline Drive, and you are riding along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The road runs for 105 miles through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. It begins near Front Royal in the north and ends at Rockfish Gap in the south, where it joins the Blue Ridge Parkway. Small stone mileposts mark the way, counted from the northern end. Here in Greene County, near the Swift Run Gap entrance, you are roughly in the middle of the southern half of the park.

Notice how slowly everyone drives. The speed limit is thirty-five miles an hour, and that is deliberate. Skyline Drive was never designed to get you anywhere quickly. Its builders saw it as a road for looking. Every curve follows the shape of the ridge, and the road bends to the land instead of cutting straight through it. The journey is the whole point.

The idea took shape in the late 1920s and early 1930s, during the age when Americans were falling in love with the automobile. Planners imagined a scenic parkway along the mountain crest, close enough to the cities of the East Coast for a weekend drive. President Herbert Hoover helped push the project forward. He kept a rustic fishing retreat in these mountains, called Rapidan Camp, near Big Meadows to the north of here.

Much of the labour came during the Great Depression. Young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal programme that gave jobs to the unemployed, worked across the park. They planted trees, shaped slopes, built trails, and laid stone walls along the overlooks. The full length of the drive was completed by the end of the 1930s. Today the road is a National Historic Landmark.

Look at the low walls at the edge of the overlooks. They are made of rough, local stone, fitted together by hand. The builders chose this material on purpose. They wanted the road to look as if it had grown out of the mountain. Some of the walls carry patches of moss and lichen in grey, green, and pale orange. Run your hand along the top, and you can feel the uneven edges of each block.

Now for a part of the story that many visitors never hear. Before the park existed, these mountains were not empty. Hundreds of families lived on the slopes and in the hollows. They farmed small plots, raised apples, kept livestock, and built churches and schools. When the national park was created in the 1930s, these families were moved off the land, many against their will. Their old home sites are still out there in the woods.

If you hike away from the road, you may find signs of them. Look for stone foundations, crumbling chimneys, rows of old fence stones, or an apple tree that seems out of place in the forest. The woods you see today are largely second growth. They returned after farms, logging, and grazing stopped. In a sense, the wild look of this landscape is younger than the road itself.

The gap here has an older story too. Swift Run Gap is a natural low point in the ridge, and people have crossed the mountains here for a very long time. Tradition holds that in 1716, the colonial governor Alexander Spotswood led an expedition over the Blue Ridge, possibly through this gap. Legend says the riders were later given small golden horseshoes as souvenirs. Historians still debate the exact route, so treat the details as a cherished local tale.

Another surprise: the Appalachian Trail runs alongside Skyline Drive for much of its length. The long footpath stretches from Georgia to Maine, and here it crosses the road again and again. If you see a hiker with a heavy pack and dusty boots at an overlook, they may be walking the whole trail. Watch for the small white paint marks, called blazes, on trees and posts. They show the way.

Keep your eyes on the edges of the road as you drive. White-tailed deer often graze on the grassy shoulders, especially early and late in the day. Wild turkeys sometimes cross in a slow line. Shenandoah is also home to black bears, and sightings are common in some seasons. Give every animal plenty of space. Stay in your car if a bear is near, and never offer food to wildlife.

The light changes everything up here. In the early morning, fog often fills the valleys below, and the ridges rise like islands from a white sea. In summer, a soft blue haze hangs over the hills. This haze gives the Blue Ridge its name. In autumn, the slopes turn red, gold, and copper. In winter, bare branches show the bones of the mountains, and on clear days the views reach much farther.

To the west, at many overlooks, you can see the Shenandoah Valley spread out below. Look for the patchwork of fields, the silver line of a river, and the darker ridges beyond. To the east lies the Virginia Piedmont, rolling and green, falling slowly toward the coast. From the crest, you can often watch weather move across the land. A rain shower may darken one valley while the sun lights the next.

Before you drive on, pause at the wall for one more minute. Feel the wind come up the slope. Listen to the leaves, the birds, and the quiet between the passing cars. The stones under your hand were set by young men almost a century ago, on land that families once called home. As you pull back onto the road, watch the next curve unfold slowly, the way the builders intended.