Park and Parkway

Park and Parkway. George Washington Memorial Parkway. Dedicated in 1932, the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway was created to honor George Washington’s 200th birthday. This scenic parkway connected Mount Vernon to the recently dedicated Arlington Memorial Bridge. As the first modern motorway built by the federal government, it was praised as “America’s Most Modern Highway.” Innovative construction plans included landscaping, widely spaced access ramps, and overpasses instead of intersections., In the early 1930s thousands of Americans lost their jobs in the Great Depression. Part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal created the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC provided jobless young men with opportunities to earn money and learn trade skills. Men from CCC camp N.P. #6, based at Fort Hunt, planted over 250,000 trees and shrubs along the parkway., (caption) , In planting trees to the memory of George Washington, there is also planted with them all that trees meant to this great man - the combined attributes of the honest, loyal service that means immortality. , Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman , George Washington Bicentennial Commission, Civilian Conservation Corps planting trees at Roaches Run, 1934