Doughton Park Maintenance Area: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Blue Ridge Park - Highlands District, National Park Service

This CLI, originally published in 2011, was updated in 2022 in order to better reflect existing conditions as well as to 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. Doughton Park Maintenance Area is a 17-acre component landscape set within 6300-acre Doughton Park, a Blue Ridge Parkway developed area in North Carolina. Access to the site is by an entry road at parkway mile marker 245.5. Crossing a narrow meadow, the road leads past Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Campsite NP-21 (1938) to the forested residence area, and terminates at the maintenance complex. The Doughton Park Maintenance Area was one of the first four maintenance areas to be planned and built along the parkway, and much of the early construction was completed by CCC & Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor in 1940 and 1941. While the entry road is visible to motorists along the parkway, the residence and maintenance clusters are obscured from view due to their position in a steeply-sloping ravine and to vegetative buffers planted in the early 1940s. The siting and the rustic, utilitarian style of this development is consistent with the original design intent of maintenance areas along the parkway. All major construction at the Doughton Park Maintenance Area occurred during the first periods of Blue Ridge Parkway development (1936-1955), contributing to the historical significance of the parkway. Construction at Doughton Park Maintenance Area began in 1938, and all primary features were completed by 1952. The buildings are utilitarian and rustic, and site design obscured view of the area from the traveler; these features are consistent with design of maintenance areas in the park at that time. Structures and features of the complex include the roads and yards, equipment storage and warehouse, blacksmith & repair shop, gas & oil house, incinerator, residence, radio substation, hose reel house, and post & shingle mill. Doughton Park Maintenance Area, previously listed in good condition, retains most major features from the period of significance but is exhibiting signs of age and deterioration contributing to the loss of its historic integrity. The property retains historic integrity in all seven criteria as defined by National Register standards but has seen some deterioration in materials and workmanship. More recent development is small in scale, compatible with the original design intent, and largely unobtrusive. The property possesses historic integrity in all seven criteria as defined by National Register standards. Buildings are sited in the same formation planned in the 1930s and 1940s, circulation follows the same routes, and the vegetation patterns planned for in the 1940s still exist today.

Doughton Park Maintenance Area: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Blue Ridge Park - Highlands District, National Park Service

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