Jordan Pond in the Acadia National Park in Maine.
Early parkways showed the potential of the parkway. The first parkway in the Nation was the Bronx River Parkway completely opened to traffic in 1924. By 1934, 114 miles of parkways existed in the New York City area. These parkways, developed by private authorities to move commuter traffic, generated great interest among highway engineers because of the imaginative design concept. When properly designed, the parkway could serve a twofold purpose—it would provide a park and an arterial highway at the same time, and in a manner that would impact favorably upon the surrounding environment.
The design concept was to develop the parkway from the interior outward in such a way as to provide freedom in the determination of the highway location to take maximum advantage of the landscape for scenic vistas and to preserve the parkway environment by suitable planting and screening. The necessity for preserving the arterial highway aspect was also recognized, and access to the parkway was provided only at long intervals. Special attention was given to the development of interesting alinement by long, easy curves fitted to the natural contour of the land, with special emphasis given to the landscaping scheme so that the completed road became a part of the natural countryside.[1]
The concept of national parkways under the authority of the National Park Service came about in 1928 when an act of Congress authorized a highway between Mount Vernon and Arlington Memorial Bridge to commemorate the birth of George Washington. National parkways encompass ribbons of land of scenic interest belonging to the U.S. Government and are authorized by an act of Congress. They are not designed for high-speed point-to-point travel, but they do constitute a through traffic highway.
The Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway
In December 1924, the 68th Congress, by joint resolution, established the United States Commission for the Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of George Washington. In May 1928, the 70th Congress passed a law directing the Bicentennial Commission, acting through and using the services of the Department of Agriculture, to construct a suitable memorial highway to connect Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, with the south end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge which crosses the Potomac River at the city of Washington. The objective was to have the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway completed in time for the bicentennial celebration in 1932.
The concept of a highway to Mount Vernon originated with a group of public-spirited citizens organized in 1886 and incorporated by the Virginia Legislature as the Mount Vernon Avenue Association in 1888. An interesting sidelight is that the Virginia Legislature simultaneously, by a joint resolution, transferred to the Association a claim for $120,000. (The State had loaned this money to the United States Government in 1790 to be used toward the erection of the public buildings at the permanent seat of government in the United States. The loan was paid in person to President George Washington, and the money was disbursed under his supervision.) The General Assembly empowered the Association to collect and receive the claim and the interest on it from the U.S. Government and to use the funds to construct the proposed memorial avenue to Mount Vernon.[2]
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