![]() ![]() ![]() But both Shenandoah and the Great Smokies had permanent residents, many with roots extending back 250 years. Until then, national park sites were largely unpeopled. Finally, in 1934, the first 34-mile segment of Skyline Drive was opened and on July 3, 1936, Shenandoah National Park itself was dedicated by President Roosevelt.Īmid the celebration, it was easy to ignore a complex and troubling aspect of the park's creation: Acquisition of the land from those who lived on it. In 1929, President Hoover built a rustic getaway on a trout stream high up in Madison County, inside the park's boundary, introducing many influential visitors to the pleasures of the Blue Ridge. With public and political support mounting, Congress in 1926 established the first - and second - national parks east of the Mississippi: the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina and Shenandoah in Virginia. In 1925 the Shenandoah National Park Association launched a "buy an acre" campaign, and more than 24,000 Virginians responded with minimum $6 purchases. Independently, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club set about clearing a 95-mile route along the Blue Ridge that would become part of the club's own 2,000-mile Georgia-to-Maine footpath. In 1923 the National Park Service director recommended the nation have an East Coast mountain resort with a scenic drive. A private 4,000-acre facility, Stony Man Camp (now the park's Skyland resort), had drawn Washingtonians since 1894 despite the seven-hour train ride and, at first, the austerity of tents, cots and water pitchers. The notion of an eastern national park amid the breathtaking beauty of the misty blue and purple mountains had been developing for decades. Incredibly, Shenandoah National Park was created as much by man as by nature. Yet for all the heartbreak suffered by displaced families, the park stands as a miracle of environmental restoration - one that transformed an exhausted and barren landscape into the glorious forests of today. The relocation of more than 2,000 mountain people in the 1930s, one of the nation's most difficult resettlement programs, remains a bitter memory to many Appalachian families and raises suspicions even today in the Virginia counties surrounding the vast federal park. These hidden artifacts are the remnants of an enduring mountain culture displaced by Shenandoah National Park when it was created 60 years ago. Before the season ends, half a million people will drive along Skyline Drive's 105 miles of spectacular scenery or hike the park's 400 miles of trails, perhaps spending a crisp night in a campground or rustic cabin.īut few visitors to this Appalachian treasure ever see what the leaves conceal - broken foundations, a lonely chimney, tumbled stone fences, rusted tools and barbed wire, severed roads, overgrown cemeteries. THE BLAZING colors of autumn will be at their peak this week in the high reaches of Washington's western playground - Shenandoah National Park. ![]()
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