At Elkton (population 1,364; elevation 971 feet, or 296 meters) the route turns eastward and climbs up the Blue Ridge, which here is a single densely worded range. Along its east is the Skyline Drive, which the excursion route follows for some 30 miles (48 kilometers). The Drive is now completed for 107 miles (172 kilometers), at an average elevation of more than 3,000 feet (915 meters). It is being continued southward to Asheville, North Carolina, as the Blue Ridge Parkway and will eventually cross the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Gatlinburg. For most of its length the Skyline Drive parallels the Appalachian Trail, a well-marked hiking path of more than a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers), which reaches from Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Practically the entire Trail passes through wooded mountains as wild as those the route follows or even wilder.
Extracted from ‘Part II: Itinerary,’ from Southeastern Excursion Guidebook. Published the by the International Geographical Union of the International Geographical Congress, 1952.