The Blue Ridge Parkway is a vast and diverse landscape reaching 469 miles from northern Virginia to Western North Carolina. For me the Blue Ridge is a cocoon that I’ve nestled in throughout my life, looking up to them for strength and adventure. But after going through archived materials in UNCA special collections office, I realized these mountains and the construction of the parkway has affected not only the wildlife but the human inhabitants in the region as well. I went through this book that detailed the experience of a family that had to sacrifice their farmland for the construction of the parkway in 1936 during the Great Depression and ultimately got paid way less than they originally bought the land for. This is information that I’m discovering through looking at these archives that never would have crossed my mind just peering up at them from my window growing up. It was built and designed to create jobs and to “protect” the natural environment but there is a lot more to it than that.
Transferring over to the story map website proved to be very difficult for me. It took me a long time to figure out how to pull together the information into an aesthetic layout for the website. I can definitely see now how digital interpretations of information adds another layer to understanding a place. Once I develop more skills with these websites (I will probably head over to the office on campus and ask for some pointers) I hope to portray all the interesting information I’ve collected better.