Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Houck Medford portrays President Franklin D. Roosevelt during an event announcing plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Those watching included Gov. Tim Kaine, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers and Rep. Rick Boucher.

Ann Childress of the National Park Service guides Scouts Patrick Moore (left), Rafe Myers, Matthew Moore and Jarod Myers before a program announcing plans to celebrate the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge Parkway turns 75 in 2010, and officials want to ensure the "national treasure" gets the celebration it deserves.

As plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2010 were unveiled this week in the Roanoke Valley, similarities to the era in which the scenic drive was born were eerie but inescapable.

At a Thursday afternoon symposium on the history of the parkway, and again Friday morning on the parkway at a kickoff featuring Gov. Tim Kaine, speaker after speaker associated current events to the economic turbulence of 1933, when the idea was conceived.

Perhaps none was more poignant than the description of those early days by an actor portraying President Franklin Roosevelt at the launch of the project:

"I know you are all experiencing losing jobs, bank failures, parents and children losing homes because they can no longer afford them," he said.

The highway project would bring jobs, provide income and enhance the quality of life for the region, he promised.

Kaine, who this week announced he is slashing more than 1,000 state jobs and making other tough budget cuts, held up Roosevelt's policy of continuing to invest in projects designed to ensure future prosperity even in economic downturns.

"Our challenge for 2009 is that we don't know where the bottom on the economy is," Kaine said, but such times call for leaders to "think big" and invest in infrastructure.

"If we rise to the challenge like that earlier generation did, there will be no stopping us."

Friday's event included an unveiling of the 75th anniversary logo and announcement of a preliminary "signature events" schedule.

That will include special activities at each end of the parkway -- in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2009, and Shenandoah National Park, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2011.

Planners will spend the next two years trying to involve as many communities and businesses as possible in the celebration, and expect an economic boost from now through the anniversary year.

Construction on the parkway began between the official creation of those two parks, in 1935. Roosevelt and his secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, championed the idea of a road linking the two parks.

According to information presented at Thursday's symposium by academic and professional experts on the parkway's history, political and practical considerations helped shape the parkway from its earliest days.

North Carolina had to fight to keep the parkway there, rather than in Tennessee. Virginia failed to get consistent rights-of-way along its stretch of the parkway, which continue to complicate life for park managers.

And figuring out just what the parkway -- and its viewshed -- should look like has been debated since 1933.

What no one questions is that the result not completed until 1987 is "a national treasure," as North Carolina Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources William Ross called it.

U.S. Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, and Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, noted their cooperative efforts in Washington to protect the parkway, which winds through both their districts.

Both also noted that, although the parkway was designed as a limited access highway, it is inextricably bound to the communities around it, which depend on it as an economic driver.

The park service estimates that the parkway generates about $2.3 billion in tourism and other business along its length.

Kaine linked the parkway to his goal of adding 400,000 acres of Virginia land to the roster of open spaces protected by conservation easements -- a primary tool now being used by the National Park Service to protect the viewshed from the highway.

Kaine also noted the economic development potential that continues to be driven by the parkway, and he called it a key tool in helping educate a new generation of conservation-minded citizens.

Children need to be taught to appreciate the beauty and importance of the parkway and its environment, "or they will not be the stewards we want them to be," he said.