Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Blue Ridge Parkway - Highlands District, National Park Service

Hasty, David

This CLI, originally published in 2011, was updated in 2022 in order to better reflect existing conditions and fill out previously spare descriptions of key landscape characteristics and features. Observational data gathered in the field, as well as excerpted narrative and graphic data from "Doughton Park and Sections 2A, B and C: Cultural Landscape Report, Blue Ridge Parkway, National Park Service" (The Jaeger Company, 2006) and "Survey and Assessment, Blue Ridge Parkway - Appendix" (Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.. 2016) provided the basis for this update. Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station is a 6-acre component landscape set within 6300-acre Doughton Park, a Blue Ridge Parkway developed area in North Carolina. The site is accessed directly from the parkway at Milepost 241.1. Major features of the site include the coffee shop, the gas station, parking areas, and an abandoned picnic area. Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station was one of the first developed areas to be planned for the Blue Ridge Parkway. The picnic area, entry, and northern parking area were built between 1937 and 1939, and a comfort station was added to the picnic area during 1941-2. After some delay, a gas station and coffee shop were built and opened to the public in 1949. Both of these buildings feature the rustic stone detailing and workmanship typical of early park development, but also incorporate materials such as concrete shingles that show the transition to more economical construction methods used in post-WWII development. The land slopes steeply away from the parkway and is heavily wooded in the rear picnic area, with a scattering of trees and understory along the parkway road. The features of the Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station landscape were planned and built during the first three periods of Blue Ridge Parkway history (spanning 1936-1955), and therefore contribute to the significance of the parkway as a National Historic Landmark. Construction at Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station began in 1937, and all major features at the property were in place by 1949. The picnic area that was built in 1937-38, consisting of 35 sites, was originally designated for African-Americans. In 1950, the wider area known as the Bluffs was renamed Doughton Park in honor of North Carolina Congressman Robert L. Dougton, a strong supporter of the parkway. Later plans for expansion and additions at the site of the Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station were never actualized. Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station, currently listed in fair condition, retains all major features from the period of significance. No major development has occurred on the property since that time, and vegetation has remained consistent. The property possesses historic integrity in all seven criteria as defined by National Register standards. Although the picnic area has been abandoned, the property maintains its original association as a place for parkway travelers to eat and refuel.

Bluffs Coffee Shop and Service Station: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Blue Ridge Parkway - Highlands District, National Park Service

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