May 26, 2010 | Smoky Mountain News
The Blue Ridge Parkway moves so harmoniously through the scenery. Its designers made use of the spiral curve, a highly engineered and deftly calculated arc that eases cars gently into a curve and exits them smoothly. The formula was perfected by railroads in previous decades. "They had all these cars they were pulling, and if you didn’t have a gentle change in curve, you had lurches, bumps and screeches that were very uncomfortable for passengers and bad for freight and prone to derailment and accidents," said Mary Myers, chair of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at Temple.