This project consists of a $120 million overall master plan and design project for a 1,000 acre tourist destination in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Explore will tell the story of Virginia's role in opening up the American frontier, especially of the experience of the Lewis and Clark Expedition among other explorations by Virginians. It will bring together numerous cultural and zoological exhibits including a frontier village on the scale of Williamsburg, a Native American museum, and a wilderness park replete with the history, flora, and fauna of the North American continent. Occupying a mountain top site overlooking the Explore Wilderness Park will be the Shenandoah Grand Hotel. This 600-room resort hotel will be visible from the Blue Ridge Parkway and is designed to function as an iconographic image for the park.
Explore has been designed for The River Foundation of Roanoke, Virginia, by Jones and Jones of Seattle, Washington; Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Centerbrook, Connecticut; and Hayes, Seay, Mattern and Mattern of Roanoke, Virginia.