WV, MD, KY: Allegheny Parkway

[seicer]

Does anyone have information regarding the once-proposed Allegheny Parkway in West Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland?

Here is what I can get from some snippets: "Hearing before the Subcommittee on Public Lands of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, United States Senate, Eighty-seventh Congress, second session, on S. 1798, a bill to establish the Allegheny Parkway in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland. May 10, 1962"

And text: https://archive.org/stream/alleghenyparkway00nati/alleghenyparkway00nati_djvu.txt

--

The development of a national parkway to be known as the
Allegheny Parkway, approximately 632 miles in length, from
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, West Virginia, Virginia,
and Maryland, to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park,
Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, generally traversing the
Allegheny Mountains as shown on the map at the end of this
report, is highly recommended.

From the results of a study recently completed by the National
Park Service and the Bureau of Public Roads, such a national
parkway appears to be both feasible and desirable. It would pass
through a rich variety of scenic locations embracing rugged large-
scale mountains^ highland valleys, mountain pastures, lowland
agricultural and orchard lands, forests, and rivers. It would
connect two National Historical Parks and provide access to or
traverse a wide range of recreational areas, including national
forests and State parks and forests, a proposed national recre-
ation area, and Corps of Engineers reservoirs. For 22 miles it
would adjoin the highly scenic Bluestone Reservoir in the New
River Gorge with access to fishing and boating facilities and
would parallel for 27 miles the historic and picturesque Potomac
River.

This parkway will provide much needed outdoor recreation
opportunities to the heavily populated eastern portion of the
country. It will be within one day's driving distance and
readily accessible to half the population of the United States.

The proposed Allegheny Parkway fully qualifies as a national
parkway in accordance with the following National Park Service
definition:

A national parkway is a federally owned, elongated park
featuring a road designed for pleasure travel, and
embracing scenic, recreational or historic features of
national significance. Access from adjoining properties
is limited and commercial traffic is not permitted. A
national parkway has sufficient merit and character to
make it a national attraction and not merely a means of
travel from one region to another. National parkways
are authorized by special act of Congress for adminis-
tration pursuant to the Act of August 25, 19l6 (39 Stat.
535) as amended and supplemented.

[seicer]

And more:

During the Joint study by the National Park Service and Bureau
of Public Roads, several alternate locations of the northern
portion suggested by the U. S. Forest Service between Sleepy Creek
Mountain and Grassy Knob, West Virginia, were thoroughly examined,
as were several alternate locations for the southern end of the
parkway between Jenkins, Kentucky, and Cumberland Gap National
Historical Park and a spur connection to Hawks Nest State Park
along the New River Gorge specified in S. 10, a bill introduced
by Senator Robert Byrd and others to provide for establishing the
parkway. In the combined Judgment of the National Park Service and
the Bureau of Public Roads, none of these alternate locations or
the proposed spur connection possessed national parkway qualities
comparable to the recommended location shown on the maps included
in this report.

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is recommended as the
northern terminus of the parkway rather than Hagerstown, Maryland,
mentioned in the bill. Access to and from Hagerstown is proposed
by way of newly constructed Interstate Highway 8l which will
connect with the parkway Just west of the Potomac River.

--

State Mileage Estimated Cost*

West Virginia 420 $137,193,000

Virginia 176 $61,215,000

Kentucky 36 $11,592,000

Total 632 $ 210,000,000

[seicer]

Background:

These legislative proposals were preceded on May 13, 1958, by a
joint congressional letter addressed to Conrad L. Wirth, former
Director of the National Park Service, and signed by Representative
W. Pat Jennings of Virginia, Carl D. Perkins and Eugene Siler of
Kentucky, and the late B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee, proposing a
Cumberlands Skyland Drive from Cumberland Gap to the vicinity of
Breaks Interstate Park on the Virginia-Kentucky line.

In March 1961, the Region One (now Southeastern Region) Office of
the National Park Service issued a report entitled "A Prelimi-
nary Plan for Recreation Resource Development in West Virginia"
which included a recommendation for constructing and adminis-
tering a recreation parkway from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
along the Potomac River in Maryland through the Allegheny
Mountains to Breaks Interstate Park and thence southward along
Pine Mountain to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, including
a spur to Grand View State Park along the New River Gorge. Publi-
cation of this plan was announced by Secretary of the Interior
Stewart L. UdaUL on June 22, 1961, in cooperation with the program
of Federal assistance contemplated under the Area Redevelopment
Act.

[seicer]

There are also references to the New River Gorge Parkway - including detailed explanations as to why significant portions not be developed as it would be intrusive to the natural environment. Fast forward to recent developments, where it is now only ten-miles in length (proposed) with just 1.3 miles completed. I'm not sure if it is on the same alignment.

[cpzilliacus]

The NPS once proposed a motor road to run parallel to the C&O Canal from Georgetown, Washington, D.C. all the way to Cumberland.  That was scrapped after protests in the early- to mid-1950's by (among others) Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

This was obviously a different proposal. I also remember hearing of  a parkway running north from Virginia (maybe Front Royal?), across eastern West Virginia, Maryland and as far north in Pennsylvania as (roughly) Williamsport, but it never got very far.

[ARMOURERERIC]

Heck, they can't even get 340 upgraded between the WV expressway section west of Harper's Ferry and the freeway portion in MD, something that needed done 25 years ago.