Digitize Historical Maps and Drawings to Provide Online Access

Photo by Driving Through Time

The Blue Ridge Parkway has more than 5,000 original maps and drawings dating from 1934 to the present. Many of the older maps and drawings, located in the parks engineering offices and archives,  are not digitized and are in very poor condition.  

With your support, you can fund the work of archivists who will locate, identify, pack and ship historic maps and drawings to National Park Service’s Denver Service Center for inventorying and digitizing. Digital copies will be made accessible to the public and staff online. 

This project will allow the park to increase public access to the parks historical documents using the NPGallery Digital Access Management System and NPS e-TIC online, a public information management system of planning, design, and construction drawings.  

You can help make sure these items and more are not lost to time.

  • Moses Cone Memorial Park original drawings donated to the park in 1949.  Items include a pencil sketch of a dairy barn and a map showing all estate structures and names of employees. 

  • 1930s County courthouse maps of property that the state purchased from landowners to construct the park.  

  • Park Land Use Maps, completed in the 1940s, hand drawn on linen.  

  • Fence designs, building designs, landscape designs from the 1930s and 1940s during construction. 

  • Planning and as-built drawings of park structures, recreational areas, campgrounds and picnic areas, utilities from 1930s to the present.  

  • Master Development Plans. Various years from the early 1940s through the 1950s. 

This project will also preserve and protect the historical maps and drawings by retiring the originals into permanent storage. The total required for this project is $22,500, with $12,500 left to raise. Please give to save these irreplaceable documents.

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