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Hillsides normally shaded by the green leaves of summer remain marked with the bare wood of winter as hundreds of thousands of snapped trees litter the ground along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Where workers haven’t had time to fully clean out piles of debris, they’ve sawed sections from massive tree trunks to clear the roads.

“We have the same number of staff — a third less than we had in 2001 — trying to not only do what they routinely would do but also clean up an incredible mess,” Parkway Superintendent Phil Francis said recently.

“(But) over 90 percent of the parkway is open, and the other areas are only closed temporarily — people can still come here and have a great time.”

The parkway, about to celebrate its 75th anniversary, is under constant assault: from weather, crumbling pavement, and suburban and resort development.

A unit of the National Park Service, the parkway gets its money from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Its annual budget hovers between $16 million and $17 million, enough to operate basic services but far too little to fill growing staff vacancies and complete maintenance backlogs.

Since 2001, for example, the parkway has cut 40 of 120 permanent maintenance positions. It would need another
$4 million a year just to fill those jobs, Francis said.

The remaining 80 people must:

• Maintain 600 buildings.
• Keep more than 200 overlooks clear for scenic views and parking.
• Mow 1,000 miles of grass along the 469-mile road.

“We don’t do business as we used to,” Francis said. “We can’t cut the grass as often. We have to make sacrifices.”

During the next few years, the parkway could get up to $80 million in extra federal funding to begin whittling down its $280 million backlog of maintenance projects, Francis said.

“If you look closely,” he said, “you can see that the wear and tear is taking its toll.”

Yet the parkway remains a remarkable showcase for the mountain beauty of western Virginia and North Carolina.

Author and parkway advocate Anne Mitchell Whisnant is keenly aware of the ongoing success of the parkway — and the dangers of public complacency.

“I’m concerned about inadequate federal funding for the national parks in general,” she said. “We have not given these national treasures anything like what they deserve for decades.

“They are all going to deteriorate and fall apart if our national commitment isn’t increased.”

It’s easy to give in to false nostalgia about the good old days of the parkway, when it seemed easier to rally political support, she said. But the parkway’s founders and curators have always faced one struggle or another to build and maintain the road.
Conceived in the darkest days of the Great Depression, the parkway was born amid great optimism and political infighting between North Carolina and Tennessee, which  wanted the southern section of the road.

And Whisnant believes supporters can overcome financial  and maintenance challenges in today’s world as well. She’s trying to become part of the solution by serving on the board of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, a Winston-Salem nonprofit that raises private money on behalf of the parkway.

With 4,000 private property owners in 29 counties that adjoin the road through Virginia and North Carolina, the parkway is constantly vulnerable to those who might use their land improperly.

That could mean a variety of things, including unauthorized driveway connections or major developments too close to the road.

So the foundation, among  other things, is creating a development guide that it will distribute in those 29 counties, said Houck M. Medford, the foundation’s founder and CEO.

Other nonprofits that work alongside the parkway include Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which recruits volunteers who regularly help out, Francis said.

The Carolina Mountain Club maintains all 300 miles of trails along the parkway.

Volunteers must even keep up appearances at the mountaintop estate of Moses Cone, the Greensboro founder of Cone Mills. Cone had his Flat Top Manor summer getaway built by Greensboro craftsmen and contractors.

The grand home, with its stunning view of lakes and mountains off the front veranda, opened in 1901. It’s now part of Moses H. Cone Memorial Park near parkway mile post 295.

The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation donates about $500,000 a year for individual projects that can make a difference in education and capital improvements.
 
Along with teaching landowners how to be good neighbors, the foundation works alongside another group to protect lands around the road.

The Conservation Trust for North Carolina has protected more than 30,000 acres along or in sight of the parkway. The trust accepts direct donations or works out conservation agreements with landowners.

Paul Miller Jr. of Deep Gap and his family gave a conservation easement to the trust for more than 200 acres between the parkway and Stone Mountain State Park. His family still owns the land, but the easement legally protects it from timber cutting and development.

Miller got a tax deduction from his donation that offset the sale of another section of nearby land.

“My brother and I had hunted out there when we were kids,” Miller said. “Now, our kids are out there.”

Still, the future is uncertain.

The road’s right of way averages 800 feet, but the land beyond it is changing dramatically. And that affects the views.

Visitors said in a park service survey that they would be less likely to return if scenic views are compromised. And fast-paced development is also hurting ecological resources along the parkway.

A group of land trusts in North Carolina and Virginia has asked Congress for $75 million over five years to buy land and conservation easements from landowners along the parkway before land prices rise.

Another challenge is the parkway’s unique plant diversity, which attracts criminals who poach plants illegally for the multibillion-dollar natural products industry.

The park service said galax, black cohosh and ginseng are the most commonly poached plants. Organized groups do most of the poaching to supply legal markets.

“This illegal activity has direct impacts on individual species, biological communities as well as research and visitor enjoyment,” the service said in a memo.

And Whisnant mentions the ongoing Gulf oil spill as a sign that the parkway, founded in the days of explosive automobile growth, must come to grips with a future of curtailed auto use.

All of those challenges fall away, however, when Whisnant goes to the parkway, as she has since childhood.

“I started my day at Waterrock Knob,” she said of one trip. “It was one of those picture-postcard, cool, sunny fall days, and I sat out there all day. There’s nothing like it. It’s a physical experience.”

Reflecting on the parkway’s history, she thought about those who brought it to life.

“There was noble and good thinking. There was a vision to it. When you read the correspondence from some of the players in the early period ...  you read about the experience they wanted to provide to people. ... There you sit on it,” she said. “You feel this public spiritedness, and now you benefit from it. It’s one generation sort of handing something over to another.”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com