LOCAL

Is Craggy Gardens picnic area on Blue Ridge Parkway falling apart?

The Citizen-Times

One of the damaged concrete picnic tables at the Craggy Gardens picnic area.

BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY – Hal and Mary Jean Herzog hike or picnic at the Craggy Gardens Picnic Area at least once a month in the spring, summer and fall, since the idyllic setting is so close to their Weaverville home.

Concrete tables are nestled into a hidden away hillside at more than 5,000 feet elevation, providing a front-row, rippling view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in June, the sweep of bright pink Catawba rhododendron blooms.

But a picnic this week left the couple with a bad taste in their mouths.

“I’ve been coming here for 45 years,” Hal Herzog said. “I’ve never seen it so bad. The first table we came to, the seats were so rotted out you couldn’t sit on them. The second table, the seat was missing. My wife said the women’s bathroom was covered in mold. It’s horrifying.”

Herzog said when he was at Craggy on Wednesday, he also noticed the grass was not well-mowed and the hiking trail leading to the visitor center appeared to be in need of maintenance - water was running directly down the trail instead of being diverted off with water bars.

Parkway management is aware of the issues, said spokeswoman Leesa Brandon. The lack of upkeep at Craggy Gardens picnic area appears to be another victim of the park’s notorious half-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

MORE: Parkway, Smokies add to economy but lack funding

According to national park conservation groups, the price tag for unmet maintenance needs across national parks has reached crisis proportions. The maintenance backlog across 417 national parks has reached $11.6 billion, according to the National Park Service.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, which is the most visited unit in the park service, with 16.1 million visitors in 2017, also has one of the highest maintenance backlogs in the system at $462 million.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has a backlog of $215 million. Most of the deferred maintenance at both parks lies in roadwork repairs. But both parks, built in the 1930s, are seeing the fallout from a stagnant budget over the past decade in historic buildings, campgrounds and picnic areas.

Craggy Gardens, at Milepost 367, is about 20 miles northeast of Asheville. It has 86 tables, mostly made of concrete, with some concrete and some wooden benches. It was built in the 1940s, Brandon said. Time, harsh weather and lack of funding for upkeep are all taking their toll, she said.

There are 14 picnic areas strategically placed along the 469 miles of the parkway, from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, to Cherokee at the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Craggy and Mount Pisgah are about equidistant from Asheville, allowing people to take advantage of the park’s original design to “drive a while, stop a while,” Brandon said.

“A lot of people over many generations have been picnicking on the parkway. Picnicking is the quintessential parkway experience. We know it’s a longstanding tradition. But some picnic areas are showing their age,” she said.

Craggy Gardens, which includes a visitor center, hiking trails, a CCC built shelter and a trail to the 5,892-foot-high Craggy Pinnacle, is one of the most popular sections on the entire parkway.

“Our maintenance staff has been in the typical catch-up mode, getting everything cleaned and opened for the season, and it’s been compounded by the heavy rainy season, which has diverted some of their activities to clean up and removal of trees down across the parkway,” Brandon said.

Mowing along the parkway entrance on Hendersonville Road in South Asheville is also a casualty of a maintenance backlog and over-taxed staff.

Brandon said maintenance crews go through the Craggy Gardens area daily to mow, make repairs and check on bathrooms.

They are aware of the disrepair of picnic tables and have been in the process of removing those that are potentially hazardous.

As for the moldy bathrooms, a problem at the Visitor Center and the picnic area, Brandon said, “when you have outdoor, wet, humid conditions, you’re likely to see some of that, but our crews are cleaning any mold they might find.”

Lack of funds means leaning on ‘Friends’

Brandon said the parkway relies on armies of volunteer partners, for funding and labor. The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation has donated money for improvements at the Doughton Park Picnic Area in Virginia, as well as for trail upgrades and new interpretive signs at Craggy Gardens.

The bulk of volunteer maintenance work falls to the nonprofit Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s Asheville chapter.

Co-chair Nancy Midgette, of Montreat, said the Friends group has a work day every other Tuesday in which volunteers fix tables and fire rings and clear trails and overgrown vegetation at the Mount Pisgah Campground, plant and maintain the flower gardens at the Parkway Headquarters and Visitor Center at Milepost 384, scrub graffiti off stone bridges and overlook signs, pick up litter, clear culverts of leaves and debris, and other back-breaking work.

Each fall the group makes a work plan with the Park Service to address the highest priorities. Midgette said the Craggy Gardens Picnic Area is on the list for this year, but the intense nature of the project, and cost, has held it up.

“The picnic tables are really old, and are made out of concrete, which is wonderful in one way, but in another way, it’s more challenging,” Midgette said.

“Once they begin to break down, like concrete will do, you can’t just replace a plank. It requires actually utilizing a special type of concrete, forming a cast, it’s a big deal. We have to have authorization from the parkway and permission to move forward. We’re waiting to hear back.”

The parkway is now undergoing a major “pavement preservation” project, chip-sealing about 65 miles from the Craggy Gardens area down to Cherokee.

Starting Monday, a contractor will begin paving between Milepost 393 at N.C. 191/Brevard Road and Milepost 413/U.S. 276 area, Brandon said. During the paving, there will be single lane closures, flaggers and traffic delays. Depending on weather, this work is expected last until mid- to late-July.

“Obviously the road is a safety issue and it is their No. 1 priority and I completely understand that. I know they haven’t been able to move as fast as they’d like because of the storms,” Midgette said.

“The problem (at Craggy) is clearly not lack of concern. They are fully aware of what needs to be done. But there is only so much you can do if your budget is continuously cut and you don’t have enough positions to get the work done. They have to make hard choices. What is the most important, and what can we not do without more resources?”

Some national park watchdog groups are calling for passage of the bipartisan National Park Service Legacy Act, introduced last year by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). The legislation establishes a National Park Service Legacy Restoration Fund to reduce the maintenance backlog through revenues the government receives for oil and natural gas royalties not otherwise dedicated to other purposes.

“It reflects badly on the National Park Service for what we call the richest country on Earth to have such glorious national parks, but to have them in such shoddy shape,” Herzog said.

“I think it’s endemic of other infrastructure problems across the country on a whole. I’m not blaming any one political faction, but things seem to be falling apart. It doesn’t bode well for visitors. When President Obama visited (in 2010), where did he go? He went up on the parkway. A lot of people go up there. It should be a showcase of the region.”

Want to help?

The Asheville Chapter of the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway holds work days every other Tuesday at the Mount Pisgah Campground and other areas of the parkway in Asheville. To volunteer, email Nancy Midgette at midgette@elon.edu.