Anne Mitchell Whisnant


Biography

Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Ph.D. is a historian and the author of Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History, published in 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. She is an administrator and adjunct assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With her husband David Whisnant, she also conducts contract historical research for the National Park Service and other clients through their small firm, Primary Source History Services (http://www.prisource.com). She is passionate about the National Parks and very concerned that a lost sense of the "public good" is threatening these treasures. She serves on the Board of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation (http://www.brpfoundation.org/).

Homepage:
Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History


Anne's Most Recent Comments (view all)
  • 10/23/2008 10:52 am - Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary Celebration Begins : That's a great question, and one that I get asked all the time. I usually say a couple of things in answer: 1. You are certainly right that due to NEPA especially (1969), there would be *vastly* more requirements that the impacts of this project be considered than were in ...
  • 10/21/2008 1:56 pm - Pruning the Parks: Mar-a-Lago National Historic Site (1972-1980) Was a Gift the National Park Service Couldn’t Afford to Keep : Bob, Wow, what a story. Who had the idea of giving this to NPS in the first place, and were there objections to this at the time? Were there tours, etc., during the 8 years that NPS had it? It would be fun to see the brochures and interpretive materials, ...
  • 10/20/2008 1:49 pm - Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary Celebration Begins : Thanks, Bob! As you no doubt know, sometimes people just prefer the romantic old stories, though. Keep up your good work, too! Cheers, Anne Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Ph.D. Historian & Author of Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History Chapel Hill, NC
  • 10/12/2008 10:56 am - Stanley W. Abbott, Wizard of the Blue Ridge Parkway : Bob, Thanks for the plug for my book and for this interesting article about the Parkway. This is timely, as we're getting ready to celebrate the Parkway's 75th anniversary in 2010; look for another article that I'll be posting here in a few days about that. Meanwhile, just one small ...
  • 5/27/2008 9:07 am - Rare Letters Stolen From Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace By Historian Recovered : Wow, this gives historians a bad name! And Theodore Roosevelt had their collection in a vault, no less. Meanwhile, at Blue Ridge Parkway, it has taken years to get the archives into a safe place with proper climate control, security, and organization. I've just written about this over on the ...
  • 2/15/2008 9:07 am - Where Do the Presidential Candidates Stand on America's National Parks? : Yes, I agree with Mookie and would take it a step further to ask the candidate where they stand, more generally, on the matter of encouraging/fostering more private funding for the parks (as was proposed in the "matching funds" part of the Centennial Initiative). I would like to know if ...
  • 9/04/2007 8:10 pm - Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years? : Dear MRC: I'm the author of the post Kurt pointed you to that compared the Centennial Initiative to Mission 66. As you can see, Mission 66 was a ten-year effort to pour funding into the National Parks in advance of the Park Service's 50th birthday in 1966. Compared to the ...


Anne's Most Recent Articles (view all)

Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary Celebration Begins

As the country careened toward what is beginning to look like a second Great Depression, citizens in North Carolina and Virginia paused on October 9 and 10 to consider the history of one of the great public accomplishments of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal 75 years ago: the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway.