Guide to Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive

Shenandoah National Park in the northern Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was created in 1926 to preserve an area of natural beauty and provide recreational opportunities for the people in the surrounding region. Long populated by Siouan- and Iroquoian-speaking Indians, the area was first opened for settlement by whites early in the eighteenth century. When the National Park Service expressed an interest in a park in the Appalachian Mountains, a group of Virginia businessmen, in league with then-state senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., championed a "skyline" drive through the Blue Ridge. Byrd's fund-raising and administrative skills proved to be crucial to the project, especially in the wake of dwindling federal support during the Great Depression. The 160,000-acre park (which has since grown to almost 200,000 acres) was dedicated in 1936 and the Skyline Drive completed in 1939.

Early Settlement

The area of the park was first inhabited by Paleo-Indians, perhaps more than 12,000 years ago. By the time of the European settlement at Jamestown, Siouan-speaking Indians had populated the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge while Iroquoian-speaking Indians had been in the Great Valley to the west. In 1669, John Lederer, a German explorer, may have been the first white man to visit the Blue Ridge. Virginia governor Alexander Spotswood promoted expansion into the region when his "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe" expedition crossed into the Valley in 1716. German and Scots-Irish families from Pennsylvania soon followed.

Mountain Residents
Photo from National Park Service

With settlement came farming, gristmills, lumbering, iron furnaces, and eventually the railroad. The "mountain people" who inhabited the Blue Ridge were largely subsistence farmers with some livestock who did part-time work in local gristmills and sawmills. They hunted, created crafts, and produced a little moonshine. By early in the twentieth century, much of the original forest had been cut down, leaving open land and scrub forest. About 500 families were living in the proposed park area at the time of its creation.

Origins of the Park
The National Park Service began a search for a park in the Southern Appalachians in 1924 to provide greater access for people in the major population centers on the East Coast who had limited access to the great parks of the western United States. Such a park near Washington, D.C., might also impress congressmen who had to vote funds for the national parks. The Southern Appalachian National Park Committee was formed to consider sites.

Informed by a friend about the search for such a park, George Freeman Pollock, the owner of Skyland, a rustic mountain resort on Stony Man Mountain, leaped at the opportunity to save his treasured property for posterity. He was joined by L. Ferdinand Zerkel, a Luray real-estate salesman, who represented a local business group interested in developing the area's commercial opportunities. In site competition with the Great Smokies of North Carolina and Tennessee, Virginians championed the possibility of a scenic road—a "skyline drive along the mountain top"—to increase support for Virginia's bid. Pollock and Zerkel enlisted Governor E. Lee Trinkle and state senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., then running for governor, in their effort and lobbied Washington on behalf of the Skyland site. To impress the selectors further, Virginians established the Shenandoah National Park Association to raise $2.5 million for the land purchases required by the federal government. A nascent Appalachian Trail movement avidly supported the Shenandoah location; eventually, the trail would wind from one end of the park to the other.

The Park and Harry Byrd
From the day of his inauguration as governor to the opening of Shenandoah National Park ten years later, Harry Byrd was actively involved in its establishment. His concern for conservation derived primarily from its connection to state economic development; he favored conserving resources to attract outside industry and tourists. His establishment of the aptly named Commission on Conservation and Development, as well as his vigorous efforts to recruit new industry by making trips to New York and writing articles, speeches, and letters to potential newcomers, attest to this. But Byrd, much like Pollock, also had a genuine love for the land. He enjoyed hiking and hunting, especially in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley. He had sold his father's cabin at the Skyland resort near Luray in 1921, but his fondness for the place certainly made him an enthusiastic backer of a national park in the area. Years later, Byrd would personally pay for the construction of several shelters in the park.

When fund-raising for land purchases slowed, Byrd assumed the chairmanship of a statewide effort that raised a reduced $1.25 million within a month's time. In April 1926 the park commission recommended creation of both the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks, and U.S. president Calvin Coolidge signed the implementing legislation on May 22, 1926.

CCC Boys Transplanting A Tree
Photo from National Park Service

To increase public support for the project, Carson approached U.S. president Herbert Hoover, an avid fisherman, about creating a campsite in the vicinity for the president's personal use. A site on the Rapidan River was selected. Hoover paid for the cost of the camp out of his own pocket, but every time he fished there Virginia and the nearby park received favorable publicity. Although the arrival of the Great Depression precluded additional federal funding for the park, Carson successfully lobbied the president and Congress to use federal funds on roads in and near the park, including the Skyline Drive, and to hire unemployed workers. A portion of the drive was opened in 1934 and it was completed in 1939.

Completing the Park
Controversy between Carson and Byrd over an early opening of the road and compensation for Carson's brother, Judge A. C. Carson, who had handled much of the legal work over land claims, plagued completion of the projects and soured their relationship. Removal of the park residents, 40 percent of whom owned their land, was another divisive question. Four hundred sixty-five families, about 2,200 people, were living there when the park deeds were conveyed to Washington. Would all residents have to leave the park or just those in the areas to be developed? National Park and Interior Department administrators decided that all would have to go, raising an issue that remained contentious for years. 17 elderly people were allowed to live out their lives in the park, the last of them died in 1975. Click here for more in-depth details about the removal of the residents.

Image Of CCC Song Sheet Music
Photo from National Park Service

Virginia politicians and people in the surrounding area, who favored a more modest removal, were critical of the federal government's decision. Those removed were of different minds about leaving. Some bitterly but unsuccessfully fought the removal in the courts, while others looked forward to a new beginning. The government built seven subsistence homestead communities outside the park boundary for many families, whose quality of life was significantly improved. A few people, the last of whom died in 1979, were given lifetime leases. Cemeteries in the park were left as they were. Completion of the park, which was eventually reduced in size to 160,000 acres - a "shoestring" four miles wide and seventy-seven miles long - awaited the administration of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the park and the Skyline Drive. His Civilian Conservation Corps established six camps in the park area whose workers constructed roads, improved forest landscaping and wildlife conditions, and fought fires. Roosevelt also agreed to an extension of the drive southward, linking up the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks with a road that eventually became the Blue Ridge Parkway. The president dedicated the park on July 3, 1936. Its existence owes much to the vision and diligence of men like George Pollock, Will Carson, and Harry Byrd.

NOTE: for more in-depth Park history, which includes actual newspaper clippings from the 1930's, visit this Web site: http://www.vahistory.org/shenandoah.html

The Park Today
Today Shenandoah National Park is one of the most popular parks in the country. Having grown to about 200,000 acres, it is a "recycled" park; the land has been reclaimed from its overused original condition so that much of it is considered wilderness. Today's forest, consisting mostly of oaks and hickories, is less than one hundred years old. Within the park are sixty peaks more than 3,000 feet above sea level, the highest being Hawksbill Mountain at 4,051 feet, seventy-five overlooks, more than 500 miles of trails, and 654 campsites. The park faces serious problems of air pollution that has lessened visibility and the infestation of gypsy moths that has defoliated the trees.

After more than 10,000 years of human use, Shenandoah has become one of the most beautiful and popular natural areas in the national park system. In September 1997, the park celebrated the inclusion of the Skyline Drive Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places. More than 400 buildings, structures and features along the Skyline Drive are listed in the Register as representative of the "best of the 1930s." With your assistance, the NPS can continue to protect and preserve the cultural and natural resources of the park for generations.

Further Reading

Conners, John A. Shenandoah National Park: An Interpretive Guide. Blacksburg, Va.: The McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company, 1988.

Heinemann, Ronald L. Harry Byrd of Virginia. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 1996.

Horan, John F. Jr. "Will Carson and the Virginia Conservation Commission, 1926–1934." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92 (October, 1984): 391–415.

Lambert, Darwin. The Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park. Boulder, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart, Inc., 1989.

Simmons, Dennis E. "Conservation, Cooperation, and Controversy: The Establishment of Shenandoah National Park, 1924–1936." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89 (October, 1981): 387–404.

Contributed by Ronald L. Heinemann, professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College.