| Summary |
The purpose of this work is to uncover and read the representational images found in one of the least studied and most utilized units of the National Park Service, the Blue Ridge Parkway. Begun in the 1930's as part of the effort to relieve the economic ills of the Great Depression, the design of the Parkway was due in large part to the inspiration of one man, Stanley Abbott, the Resident Landscape Architect for the project. Abbott was the creative force behind many of the images that make the Parkway famous. By placing carefully chosen cultural artifacts in carefully designed physical settings, Abbott sculpted a landscape that was to signify an insular, self-sufficient, pioneer Appalachian culture. Designed as roadside scenery, such a landscape not only buttressed existing stereotypes concerning the "identity" of the region and its inhabitants, it also reinforced certain ideals concerning the place of the car and its driver. As such, it can be argued that the Blue Ridge Parkway facilitated two myths, that of the roadside and that of the car itself. Applying a methodology developed by Duncan (1990) for the reading of landscape, and by Barthes (1972) on the creation of myth, an attempt is made to uncover some of the meanings embodied within the staged scenery Abbott wanted tourists to see as they drove the Blue Ridge Parkway. Breathtaking panoramas of the high rolling mountains, and scenes of rural mountain culture and lifestyle, present car occupants with a series of portraits of what mountain life and mountain people were like. Abbott and many others in positions of influence on the project during its formative years were mostly outsiders to the area in which they were working and brought with them conceptions of the Appalachian region and its people -- conceptions that, when realized in a landscape, were to become "common sense," "natural" representations of people and place. The driving argument of this thesis is then, that in constructing the Blue Ridge Parkway, Abbott attempted to produce myth: that is, a stabilization of the meanings embodied in the landscape of the Blue Ridge Parkway. |
