Scenic easement
A scenic easement is a recorded restriction on how a parcel may be used, placed to protect what can be seen from a road, a park or another vantage point while the owner keeps the land. No Virginia statute defines the term; beside the Blue Ridge Parkway it names easements pursued for the Parkway in the 1930s.
The 1935 Parkway policy: a hundred acres a mile owned outright, fifty more held as scenic easements
In February 1935 the Blue Ridge Parkway's land policy was revised to set a target for how much land the road would take: a corridor owned outright, plus limits held on the land beside it.
In February 1935 the policy was revised to target acquiring 100 acres per mile in fee simple (equivalent to an average of about 825 feet wide) and an additional 50 acres per mile in scenic easements.
Blue Ridge Parkway National Historic Landmark nomination, 2024
The fee simple part is the right-of-way the National Park Service now manages; the 2024 nomination describes it as averaging 825 feet wide. Land under the scenic easement part stayed in private hands: the adjoining owner kept it, and the easement held back certain uses on it.
The nomination says about two-thirds of the route crossed private land, where Virginia and North Carolina had to negotiate both the right-of-way and the scenic easements. By federal statute the Parkway consists of the lands and easements those two states conveyed to the United States for the right-of-way. The nomination adds that after 1938 few, if any, new scenic easements were pursued, which is why the term tends to surface in an older chain of title rather than a recent one.
What that means for a house site near the road is a separate question, handled in can I build near the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Clearing, certain structures and dumping: what the historic Parkway easements typically restricted
The nomination describes the purpose of the Parkway's scenic easements in plain terms, and the list is specific rather than sweeping.
Their purpose, the nomination says, was "to protect the natural and cultural setting of the Parkway" by keeping adjoining landowners from unauthorized clearing and from erecting incompatible structures, "such as commercial or industrial buildings, utility poles, and billboards."
Property owners could not remove trees or bushes without a permit, and no unsightly dumping was allowed.
Blue Ridge Parkway National Historic Landmark nomination, 2024
That is a description of what the easements typically restricted, not the text of any one deed, and the documents themselves are the only reliable guide to what each one says. Whether a particular easement still requires permission before trees come down is taken up in can I cut trees on land next to the Parkway.
No statute defines a scenic easement, but two Virginia acts define close relatives
Scenic easement is a descriptive name, not a defined term in the Code of Virginia. Two statutes do define easements that can serve the same end.
The Open-Space Land Act defines an open-space easement as a public body's nonpossessory interest imposing limits or obligations to protect natural or open-space values, and it counts land preserved for historic or scenic purposes as open-space land. The Conservation Easement Act defines a conservation easement the same way but for a qualifying charitable holder. The land trust version has its own entry at conservation easement, and how Parkway, open-space and conservation easements compare side by side is answered in what is a scenic easement.
One more distinction keeps the word honest. A scenic route or a park next door is not a recorded restriction on a neighbor's land. The New River Trail is a state park on a former railroad right-of-way, and The Crooked Road describes itself as a driving trail. Neither name, by itself, puts anything in the chain of title of the land beside it; only a recorded instrument does that.
Found an old Parkway easement in your chain of title?
Send the county and the deed reference, and Lowell will pull the recorded instrument with you and say who reads its terms and who locates it on the ground. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions about this term
Does the Park Service own the land under a Parkway scenic easement?
No. The 2024 National Historic Landmark nomination separates the right-of-way, which the United States owns and the National Park Service manages at an average of 825 feet wide, from the scenic easements on adjoining land, which restricted what the adjoining owners could do there. The owner kept the land under an easement. What a particular easement still restricts is in the recorded deed.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Blue Ridge Parkway National Historic Landmark nomination, 2024 (PDF) Virginia Department of Historic Resources
- Parkway Land Use Maps National Park Service
- 16 U.S.C. 460a-2: Blue Ridge Parkway U.S. Code
- Va. Code 10.1-1700: Open-Space Land Act definitions Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 10.1-1009: Conservation Easement Act definitions Code of Virginia
- New River Trail State Park Virginia DCR
- The Crooked Road home page The Crooked Road