Blue Ridge mountains Painting

This painting is a scene from one of the lookouts on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Honestly, I’m not taking artistic license, the mountains really do look that blue! Not only are the mountains impressive, so is the parkway that winds through them. The construction of the road began when the U.S. Senator of Virginia suggested to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the road should be extended to connect with the recently established Great Smoky Mountains National Park, way back when, at the height of the Great Depression. The final construction was only completed in 1987 because of objection to the proposed construction at Grandfather Mountain citing the fragility of the mountain’s ecology. After years of negotiating, the revolutionary Linn Cove Viaduct, which had been constructed from the top down to protect the mountain’s terrain, connects all 469 miles of continuous road.