Blue Ridge Parkway's tunnels inspire quarter design

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Riding through the tunnels on the Blue Ridge Parkway makes Frank Morris feel like a little kid again.

So it's only fitting that the U.S. Mint would choose the Memphis artist and illustrator who has designed other coins and Congressional Medals of Honor to create the new Blue Ridge Parkway quarter, which will be unveiled Thursday here.

The quarter, which features one of the parkway's iconic tunnels, is the 28th coin to be released in the mint's America the Beautiful Quarters Program, said Tracy Scelzo, U.S. Mint spokeswoman.

The U.S. Mint began the America the Beautiful series in 2010. The 12-year initiative includes 56 quarters featuring national sites in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories.

The reverse designs depict some of the USA's most cherished national parks, including Arches and Everglades minted last year.

Also released last year: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park's quarter depicting a log cabin, a split-rail fence, a segment of forest, a hawk circling above, mountains in the background and just one state name —Tennessee. A little more than half of the half million acres lie in North Carolina.

But each quarter can have only one state name, Scelzo said. The parkway quarter mentions only North Carolina even though it extends into Virginia. Virginia's quarter will be released next year.

Festivities at Thursday's quarter launch will include music from Grammy winner David Holt; Blue Ridge Parkway rangers, who will have park activities for children; and a free quarter and U.S. Mint coin box for every child younger than 18, said Leesa Brandon, parkway spokeswoman.

Asheville Savings Bank will have $10 rolls of the new Blue Ridge Parkway coins that people can exchange.

Morris' design, engraved by Joseph Menna, depicts the image of leaving one parkway tunnel as you enter another, along the graceful curvature of the parkway hugging a mountainside, and framed by North Carolina's state flower, the dogwood.

"When the assignment came up, I was delighted because I had just traveled the entire parkway," Morris said. "I had the pleasure of driving from New York City down to D.C. and Shenandoah National Park and took the parkway from there."

Morris said 80% of designing a new coin is research and brainstorming because all designs must be historically and architecturally accurate. He came up with 18 to 20 sketches of different parkway landscapes, including Linn Cove Viaduct that skirts Grandfather Mountain.

But in the end, the tunnels had it.

"As an artist, I appreciate the skill that went in to creating the stone tunnels," he said. "Italian and Spanish immigrant stone masons built them.

The designs were developed in consultation with the governor or chief executive of each host jurisdiction, the Interior Department, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee with final approval from the Treasury Department, Scelzo said.

Gary Johnson, who was the chief parkway architect for 16 years before he retired in 2011, is excited to see that the quarter depicts a tunnel. The Blue Ridge Parkway has 26 tunnels along its 469 miles that stretch from Rockfish Gap, Va., to Cherokee, N.C. Twenty five tunnels are on the North Carolina side of the park.

"The tunnels — they're such an iconic view of the parkway, and since this is a North Carolina coin, I think it's so appropriate," Johnson said. "There are so many beautiful views. It's a classic image of parkway with the stone work, and to me it was the perfect choice."

The parkway is the second most visited unit of the National Park Service with nearly 14 million visitors last year. Construction began in 1935 at Cumberland Knob near the North Carolina-Virginia border. Johnson said the tunnels were built over time in the 1940s and '50s, primarily by drilling and blasting through solid rock.

"To me what's so amazing, they knew how they wanted the road to go through the mountain, and started drilling and blasting and kept the great alignment of the roadway," he said. "They had this great arch shape. Over the years we've lined the tunnels with concrete to keep them from dripping and freezing into massive stalactites. For the technology that was used, they've stayed in pretty good shape."

Driving the parkway is a cinematic experience, Johnson said.

"What's exciting about tunnels, you go from great daylight views, then you're enclosed in darkness and come out of the tunnel to another great panoramic view. I just think that idea of being in the dark and coming out into this sunlit area, it makes the drive exciting," he said. "Children in the car pay a lot of attention to that. What's cool is you're driving underground. You're going under this mountain ridge, and that feels cool. That's the little boy in me."

Morris said his design does not depict any one tunnel on the parkway but is meant to evoke the general memory of the experience of the drive.

"The biggest challenge is trying to create a really big impact on a tiny quarter," he said. "I spend a lot of time designing a theme — to evoke that feeling of coming out of one tunnel and heading into another. It is a collective memory of the tunnels.

So many people in so many states move through that environment — the dogwood, two tunnels, coming out of one and going into another," Morris said. "I love that people can look at this coin and remember their experience on the parkway. Or it will encourage them to come visit the parkway."