The Story:
This cache is placed near the junction of three important things in this area, the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the beginning of the Skyline Drive and their intersection with the Appalachian Trail. The number of people that have passed the posted reference point on their way to or from one of these three routes makes this location iconic. I have included a little history about all three of these historic thru-ways.
The Blue Ridge Parkway:
Celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2010, the Blue Ridge Parkway is a product of the New Deal’s efforts to provide jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression. Construction began in September 1935 at Cumberland Knob near the North Carolina and Virginia state line. The idea was to create a link between the Shenandoah National Park to the edge of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Completed in 1983, the Parkway’s history has been highlighted by documentarian Ken Burns in the six-part “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” series originally aired on PBS. I highly recommend checking this series out if you get the chance.
The Skyline Drive:
In 1924 the search for a national park site in the east brought the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Their job was to find a site accessible to the 40 million Americans living in eastern cities including Washington, DC. The committee recommended the site that is today visited by millions of Americans each year, Shenandoah National Park. As part of that recommendation the committee, recognizing the proliferation of the automobile, suggested that the “greatest single feature” of the proposed park should be a “sky-line drive along the mountain top, following a continuous ridge and looking down westerly on the Shenandoah Valley…and also commanding a view of the Piedmont Plain stretching easterly to the Washington Monument.” Construction of such a roadway was a pioneering work of landscape architecture and engineering, as well as a famous work-relief project. Work was begun before the park was even established using emergency employment relief funds, and continued by the boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps who spent thousands of hours building beautiful rock walls and landscaping sweeping overlooks to make Skyline Drive the experience it has been for over 75 years.
The Appalachian Trail:
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) was formed in 1925 to advance proposals for a continuous "super trail" along the mountain crests of the eastern wilderness. Benton MacKaye, first a forester for the U.S. Forest Service and later a planner for the Tennessee Valley Authority, advocated a trail maintained by local organizations that would support not just a recreational route, but also shelter camps and food and farming communities to support the camps. MacKaye saw the Appalachian Trail as an escape from the evils of modern life and as "a moral equivalent to war." Although MacKaye's larger philosophic vision for the trail was not realized, his legacy is the 2,175-mile-long route that exists today.
The Cache:
I have posted the coordinates for parking at all three of the areas close to the AT entrance. If you are planning to hike for a while after obtaining the cache or going after the other cache .3 miles further down the AT then I would recommend parking at the Main parking area or the Afton overlook. This cache is located past the AT boundaries only about 400' from the main trail so be wary of other hikers and be sure to use all of your stealth capabilities to avoid being spotted. This becomes less of an issue during the summer thanks to the cover of the brush and undergrowth. I rated the terrain a 3.5 due to the heavy growth of saplings and other brush during the summer and the presence of snow for long periods of time during the winter.
Original contents include: Ziploc bag containing Log book (BYOP), 2 unopened Hand Warmers, Ziploc "swag-bag" with miscellaneous trade items and for the FTF, a lucky "Number 7" Geo-Token and a carabiner compass.