The Blue Ridge Parkway's venerable split-rail fences, once in disrepair, are finally being restored.
“ICON TO EYESORE," I WROTE four years ago about the Blue Ridge Parkway's distinctive split rail fences. The fence situation looked dire. A 2002 inventory had revealed that much of the parkway's fencing had already disappeared and that nearly a third of what remained needed to be replaced. To preserve "the original design intent of the parkway," approximately 85,000 linear feet of the fencing needed to remain in place and be maintained, said Larry Hultquist, then the parkway's resident landscape architect. (He has since retired.)
The biggest problem was building materials. The blight that swept through eastern America's forests in the early decades of the 20th century had provided parkway designers and builders with an abunda11ce of cheap, decay-resistant, straight-grained fence-building material.
By 2002, the carefully hoarded supply of replacement rails was running out. The few chestnut rails obtainable from other sources were prohibitively expensive. Worst of all, no other wood could be effectively substituted. Decay-resistant locust worked well enough for posts, but didn't split well for rails. Should the parkway try a manmade substitute: recycled plastic or fibrous concrete made to look like wood? Hultquist didn't think so.
So imagine my surprise last September when, driving north on a hawk-watching expedition, I noticed new sections of fence at Dough ton Park and Rocky Knob. I stopped to examine them. Definitely wood - not plastic or concrete – but not locust. It looked terrific. What was it?
Pressure-treated poplar from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I learned from Ray Shaw and Rick Baker, facilities managers for the Highlands and Plateau districts. Of the 21.65 miles of historic wood rail fencing that remained along the parkway when the inventory was conducted, Baker estimates that their districts account for most of it: eight to 10 miles in each of them.
"We're pretty aggressive about going after funding for the fencing," Shaw told me. "We request it every year. The fencing is a signature thing. You don't see this kind of fencing anymore except along the parkway, or occasionally in a small park." To conserve what remains, "we've removed it where it wasn't needed, and in places where fences are needed but rail fencing isn't required, we use wire fencing. But in Rocky Knob, Doughton Park, down near Blowing Rock and up in the Ridge District where there is historic fencing, we're trying to keep it."
Their aggressiveness paid off this year when the parkway was promised close to $300,000 in special project funding for the fencing. There was still some question last fall about whether the money would actually come through - and whether they could obtain sufficient rails for the work planned for this summer. But there was good news in April. "We did get the rail money for the park, and were able to obtain about $23,000 worth of pressure-treated rails," Baker said. "That's more than enough for the two fences that we plan to replace this summer."
The sections of new fencing I'd noticed went in a couple of years ago, when Shaw had been able to replace 5,000 linear feet of dilapidated fencing in Doughton Park with the pressurized poplar and Baker had had enough of the material to replace a quarter mile of fencing near MP 170 at Rocky Knob. With the chestnut rails salvaged from those projects, and help from a coterie of Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway volunteers, they have been able to do considerable patching in other places. After a training session, Friends volunteers replaced close to 400 sections of snake fencing at Smart View alone, said Rocky Knob chapter's Gloria Hilton.
"When we take out a section, we separate out the rotten stuff and put the good rails back in the maintenance area. But we've been using up the stash of chestnut."
"It's invaluable, the help they've given us," Baker says. "It's hard work, and there's sort of an art to fence building."
Although chestnut and pressurized poplar look similar, the two are adamant about not mixing the new wood with the old.
"It looks terrible," Baker says. "The fencing has always been a great source of pride for the employees in this district." When he came to the parkway from Shenandoah National Park 14 years ago, employees were embarrassed about its falling into disrepair "It was a real sore spot with them." Until recently, a dearth of materials, funding and personnel prevented him from doing anything about it.
Now major repairs are being made, thanks to special funding, seasonal staff and volunteers adept in the art of fence building. Beginning in late June or early July, new fencing will be going in across from the Rocky Knob campground (MP 167) and at the Smart View picnic area (MP 155).
Part of the reason the special funding was approved was probably that most of the fence serves a purpose as well as being scenic: It prevents cows grazing on agricultural leases from wandering into the road. Collapsed fencing represents a safety problem, especially in high pastures like those at Rocky Knob and Daughton Park where fog can sweep in and cause a whiteout.
You might suspect cattle seeking greener pastures are responsible for knocking down the fencing, but Baker doubts it.
"Folks love to photograph the fences. They like to get the family out and put the kids on the top rail, and it breaks because the wood is old and rotten.
"Poplar's great wood, though not known for its structural strength. It weathers out nicely and gives the same visual effect as the chestnut. We just hope it holds up to the picture taking."
Find out more about Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway's work: BlueRidgeFriends.org.