A Skyline Drive for a Bird's-Eye View

A Skyline Drive for a Bird's-Eye View. Shenandoah National Park. "It is a wonderway over which the tourist will ride comfortably in his car while he is stirred by a view as exhilarating as the aviator may see from the plane." , Senator Harry F. Byrd, Virginia, When construction began on Skyline Drive in 1931, NPS landscape architects were challenged to design a new kind of road. Skyline Drive would "lay lightly on the land", that is, roll across the mountain without major changes to the landscape., The scenic highway should also provide opportunities for recreation and the simple pleasure of enjoying the view. To accomplish this, civil engineers devised clever ways to build a scenic-yet-stable road in steep and rocky terrain. This careful attention to the driving experience means that you hardly notice the road as you travel along, taking in the grand vistas before gliding into green tunnels of trees. It all melds together into a smooth memory: road, car, and scenery., (marker background image caption) , As you travel along Shenandoah’s Scenic Byway, notice how often you can see Skyline Drive peeking in and out from the trees, beckoning you to the next overlook. There are nearly 70 overlooks in all, each offering a different view of what’s beyond.