Topography

 

The Blue Ridge Parkway covers 469 miles starting in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and ending in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina.  Of the 469 miles, 217 are in Virginia and 252 are in North Carolina (Logue, 3).

 

The Appalachian Mountains were formed more than 230 million years ago at the close of the Permian period.  At their “birth” the mountains towered some 10,000 feet higher than Mt. Everest at an astonishing 40,000 feet above sea level.  The rock that eventually formed the Appalachians was laid down 500 million to 1 billion years ago during the Cambrian/Precambrian period in a marine environment as sandstone and shale.  The formation of the mountain range caused the sedimentary rocks to be transformed into the metamorphic rocks (quartzite, schist, gneiss, marble, and slate) you see today (Logue, 3).

 

Immense portions of the mountains have undergone no less than three cycles of erosion and uplifting with each cycle of erosion to the level of peneplain.  The current uplift is still occurring at a rate of approximately 1.5 inches every 1,000 years (Logue, 3).

 

By traveling the Parkway’s 469 miles from beginning to end one can witness an amazingly diversified topography.   A master ridge runs from Rockfish Gap to Roanoke, Virginia.  Extending from the master ridge are numerous spurs that curve and run parallel to the master ridge itself with many exceeding it in height.  Looking east of the master ridge one finds the lowlands of the Piedmont and to the west is the Great Valley followed by the Alleghenies (Logue, 3).

 

Continuing south on the Parkway from the Roanoke Valley one will eventually pass through an extended plateau as one leaves the Blue Ridge Mountains.  On the west one finds rolling hills that were once a peneplain that has now become uplifted.  Like wise, one will see a landscape speckled with rounded knobs.  A steep slope plunges to the east into the Piedmont. (Logue, 4).

 

Summits greater than 6000 feet can be found in parallel ridges and their spurs from the Black Mountains to the Great Smoky Mountains.  These ridges are broken up by narrow valleys (Logue, 4).

 

The creeks and rivers north of the divide that have their origin in the springs of the Alleghenies eventually flow across the Parkway and make their way eastward to the Atlantic Ocean.   From the Roanoke Valley to the Black Mountains the Parkway follows the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains for 215 miles.  Water is able to flow westward toward the Gulf of Mexico and eastward to the Atlantic Ocean from the Blue Ridge along this eastern continental divide.  All water flows into the Gulf of Mexico south of the Black Mountains (Logue, 4).

 

Works Cited

 

Logue, Victoria, Frank Logue, and Nicole Blouin.  Guide to the Blue Ridge

Parkway. 2nd ed.  Birmingham: Menasha Ridge, 2003.