H.R. 6365: Wintergreen Emergency Egress Act

This bill does one narrow thing: it clears a path for an emergency exit out of Wintergreen, a mountain community in Nelson County, Virginia. The catch is that the only practical route crosses land managed by the National Park Service along the Blue Ridge Parkway, so local officials can't just build it on their own.

The key change is a single word. Current law says the Interior Secretary "may" grant this kind of right-of-way across parkway land — meaning it's entirely up to the agency. H.R. 6365 swaps in "shall" for this specific route. Once the conditions are met, Interior would no longer have the discretion to say no.

Those conditions aren't a rubber stamp. Before the right-of-way is issued, Interior has to study other escape options that don't cross federal land — including whether existing trails could be widened into roads — run an analysis of how a fire would behave around the route, and complete the standard environmental and historic-preservation reviews. Only after all of that, reported to Congress, does the requirement kick in.

The bill points to a specific map: a route labeled "Proposed Egress" near Milepost 9.6, dated September 2024. So this isn't a general policy about park access — it's Congress directing one mapped outcome on one stretch of federal land, which is part of why it drew attention in committee.