Fathers Day of a Different Kind

To commemorate the holiday, let’s consider a different kind of a “Father”, this weekend.

Alleghany native, Robert L. Doughton could, arguably, be considered the “Father of the Blue Ridge Parkway.” After all, without his efforts in navigating the legislation through Congress, the whole project might never have been funded.

View of the property of Robert Doughton in Laurel Springs, N.C. at milepost 248, of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Image taken from the National Park Service, Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters by A.S. Burns on September 11, 1936.
US Representative Doughton was a Democrat who represented Alleghany County from 1911-1953 and was instrumental in the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Courtesy National Park Service, Blue Ridge Parkway.

Indeed, there was bipartisan unanimous support in 1938 (unheard of, these days in our current US House of Representatives!) to name the project, the Doughton- Blue Ridge Parkway. The idea was only dropped in the Senate because they had purchased the land under the name Blue Ridge Parkway, and to change the name would have been a legal nightmare- construction was already well underway.

Clipping from page-B2 of the March 3, 1938 edition of the Evening Star newspaper from Washington, D.C.. From Chronicling America at the US Library of Congress.

Colonel Joseph Hyde Pratt first suggested the idea of a Blue Ridge Parkway in 1912. At the recommendation of Virginia Senator Harry Byrd, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes approved construction of the scenic highway that would connect the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with the Shenandoah National Park. Stanly L. Abbott took on the design of the Blue Ridge Parkway and was hired as the parkway’s acting superintendent and first resident landscape architect in 1936.

But it was “Farmer Bob” Doughton who was recognized by his contemporaries for distinction.