The project is part of a much broader plan called the Blue Ridge Heritage Initiative. This initiative, formulated in 1996 to encourage heritage tourism development in southern Appalachia, brings together organizations involved in a broad range of activities, including natural-resource management, arts, culture, historic preservation, recreation, economic and community development, and planning. Through this initiative, the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia are collaborating to plan and implement the Blue Ridge Music, Cherokee Arts and Culture, and Garden and Countryside heritage trails. When completed by the year 2000, these heritage trails will link rural communities with one another and with the Blue Ridge Parkway. These new heritage trails, along with the Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina already developed by HandMade, will complete a system of four self-guided heritage trails with a network of sites that allow visitors to access the authentic heritage of the region.
Heritage tourism offers a promising strategy to enhance the economy of the region.
Using the parkway to link heritage trails is an idea pioneered by HandMade in America, a non-profit organization that developed seven craft trails that connect 22 counties of western North Carolina to the parkway. The Blue Ridge Heritage Initiative expands HandMade's heritage tourism model to three states and gives visitors opportunities to take advantage of the parkway as a gateway into rural communities that are willing and prepared to share their cultural heritage in appropriate settings.