Skyline Drive follows the crest of the Blue Ridge, and nearly every overlook comes with a story.
At Signal Knob Overlook, Confederate General Gordon spied an exposed Union flank in October 1864. His dawn attack at Cedar Creek routed two-thirds of Sheridan's army.
At Hogwallow Flats Overlook, the blue haze below comes from hydrocarbons the trees release. Mars has a Hogwallow Flats too, named by NASA's Perseverance team for this overlook.
Range View Overlook lines up five peaks in one southward sweep, Old Rag and Stony Man among them, and a 1924 committee first proposed this mountaintop drive. Hogback Overlook runs two-tenths of a mile, the park's longest, with the Shenandoah River and Massanutten's twin ridges below.
At Beahms Gap the forest won, swallowing a once-cleared panorama. Senator Harry Byrd personally paid for Byrds Nest, the stone shelter beside the lot. Farther on, Thornton Gap has carried travelers over the Blue Ridge for centuries, and at Panorama, a former roadside resort, ranger star parties now fill the lot.
Hello Tour Guide's Shenandoah Park tour tells these stories at the moment you reach each place.