Through engaging with oral history interviews collected in the 1990’s of early Blue Ridge Parkway employees, students will explore the stories that birthed and shaped the Blue Ridge Parkway. Interviewees include park planners and engineers, historians, managers, and agronomists who worked on the Parkway during and after the 1930’s Depression era as well as tenants who lived and worked on Moses and Bertha Cone’s Flat Top Estate in Blowing Rock prior to Bertha Cone’s death in 1947. Students will choose one interview to serve as their window into the past through transcription, discussion with the interviewer, class sharing, readings, visits to the park, deeper research into an angle of interest discussed in their interview. This course will involve field trips to the Cone Estate and other nearby Parkway sites. Students will gain deeper insight into the value of gathering firsthand data and the multiple perspectives that shape the complex history of a place.