www.roanoke.com

The Blue Ridge Parkway is only as valuable as the scenic mountain views it offers travelers. If those wooded views disappear, replaced by ridgetop condominiums and suburban subdivisions, the parkway will offer little to entice repeat visits.

Preserving parkway viewsheds from development is an expensive proposition, though a worthwhile one - both aesthetically and economically. Studies have shown that parkway tourists are an economic boon to this region, spending $2 billion every year in local communities. Studies also reiterate that the views are what keep those tourists coming. If the vistas become too marred by development, tourists are unlikely to return.

Considering those stakes, Virginians should approve of the decision by parkway officials to buy a 20-acre tract of forested hills for $800,000. Passing up that opportunity because of the price would have paved the way - literally, unfortunately - for further development of the parkway's viewshed.

The 20 acres is just south of a growing housing development off Cotton Hill Road. If left on the market, that land no doubt ultimately would have been developed, and the Blue Ridge Parkway would become a little less special.

Even some people who understand that potential loss expressed the view that the land was "ridiculously overpriced." Richard Wells, president of the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, said, "It's a shame that the federal government can't spend the money a little better than that."

Without question, parkway officials should spend scarce federal dollars wisely, but the accuracy of the appraisal that determined the value of the land is unquestionable.

Some may have a hard time swallowing the $800,000 price tag because an adjacent 63-acre parcel is being donated to the parkway. But one man's admirable decision to make a gift of his property is unlikely to lessen nearby property values, while the combined acreage secures an unimpeded visual expanse of natural beauty in perpetuity.

Parkway officials made the right decision.