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| Mary's Rock Tunnel |
On a sunny and breezy May day
with baby blue skies and cotton ball clouds, we embarked on a drive to
Shenandoah National Park’s scenic roadway. Skyline Drive follows the crest of
the Blue Ridge Mountains for 105 miles to elevations ranging from 591 feet in
the northern part of the park to 4,049 feet at Hawksbill Mountain, and an
altitude of 3,650 feet at Big Meadows with its Lodge constructed in 1939. The
park is located only 75 miles from the crowded northern Virginia and
Washington, D.C.
For ardent hikers, there
are over 500 miles of trails. For drivers, there are 75 breath-taking
overlooks. The park’s 101-mile hiking stretch of the Appalachian Trail rests on
movable tectonic plates. Rocks born from the compression of these tectonic
plates shaped the Grenville range with “ancient rocks that form the base of the
Blue Ridge Mountains in and around Shenandoah.”
What geologists call “basement
rocks” can be seen in Mary’s Rock Tunnel, Old Rag Mountain, and Hazel Mountain
Overlook. A thin stream of water is flowing on the rock at the edge of Mary’s
Rock Tunnel. It was cut in 1932 through
600 feet of mountain granite (granodiorite) with a clearance of 12 feet, 8
inches. For three months, workers repeated the process of “drill, blast, and
clear.” When they broke through to daylight in January 1932, visitors drove
through almost immediately. As historian Darwin Lambert explained, the tunnel
was designed “partly for show and partly to eliminate extensive scars and
expensive rock retaining walls.”
“Greenstone” formations
from lava flows 1.2 billion years ago can be seen in Stony Man, Crescent Rock,
Indian Run Overlook, and on Skyline Drive.
“White quartzite” formations at Calvary Rocks testify to sediments from
the Iapetus Ocean billions of years ago.
“Trace fossils” were left
behind from an ancient ocean worm.
The Blue Ridge “shunts
water east or west into one of the park’s three major river systems – the James,
the Shenandoah-Potomac, and the Rappahannock.” According to the National Park
Service, “Millions of residents from Newport News to Washington, D.C., drink
water that originates within Shenandoah’s boundaries.”
The beautiful vistas, the
breathtaking landscape, the forests, the hollows, the meadows, the native and
non-native fauna and flora are not exactly “wilderness’ – they are, as FDR
said, “the joint husbandry of our human resources and our natural resources.”
A hawk gliding
effortlessly over the 3250 feet drop, pushed up by air currents, drew my eye to
the dark shadow projected by a white cloud over the forested valley below. It
was a reminder that all this beauty before my eyes came at a heavy price that a
lot of Americans before us were forced to pay. Millions visit and enjoy this park
every year without knowing the sacrifice so many families were required to make.
Around the Big Meadow
Lodge, a small deer was grazing on the edge of the road unafraid of the human
presence. Shenandoah is home to several hundred American black bears which,
luckily, we did not encounter. The most common animals are the white-tailed
deer and eastern grey squirrels. Downy woodpeckers and indigo buntings are most
commonly observed birds. Baltimore orioles depend on Shenandoah’s forests
during seasonal migrations. The streams’ trout population was augmented
artificially by 50,000 in the 1930s when game officials stocked the brooks. The
rare Shenandoah salamander is the only federally designated endangered species.
“Wildlife experts released white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and a pair of
beavers in the park during the 1930s.” A local man who shot the male beaver was
arrested and imprisoned for three years.
Rich urbanites came to
Skyland Resort in the late 1800s, long before the park was established in 1935.
Skyland was a private mountain resort built in the late 1800s by George Freeman
Pollock, a naturalist and conservationist. Skyland flourished for 50 years. George
Pollock and his wife Addie built Massanutten Lodge in 1911. “Pollock was
instrumental in choosing Blue Ridge as the site for the first national park in
the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Shenandoah was authorized by Congress in
1926 and dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 3, 1936.” Pollock
described the Blue Ridge as “beauty beyond description.”
Conservationist John Muir
called for the creation of national parks as a way to preserve the most
beautiful western landscapes. He wrote in 1914, “Thousands of tired,
nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find that going to the
mountains is going home; that wilderness is necessity; and that mountain parks
and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating
rivers, but as fountains of life.”
In 1923, Stephen Mather,
the first director of the National Park Service, lobbied for a national park in
the East.
To escape the heat and
stress of Washington, D.C., President Herbert Hoover and First Lady Lou Henry
Hoover had their summer fishing camp built on the Rapidan River in 1928.
In 1924, the Southern
Appalachian National Park Committee (ANPC) proposed a “possible skyline drive along
the mountain top.” The Skyline Drive Historic District (1931-1951) has been
placed on the National Register of Historic Places in April 28, 1997 by the
Department of the Interior.
The Appalachian Trail
founder Benton MacKaye described his idea of a 2,000 mile footpath in 1924 as “A
wilderness way through civilization.” Today’s trail stretches 2,173 miles from
Mt. Katahdin, Maine, to Springer Mountain, Georgia. One hundred miles of the
Appalachian National Scenic Trail crosses Shenandoah National Park.
Facilities were built by
Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) “boys” in the 1930s. The
program FDR launched in his 100 days in office, the CCC, dubbed FDR’s civilian
army and Tree Army, worked well. In addition to 3,702 Virginians, CCC hired a
vast number of needy unemployed workers who received $30 a month sent directly
to their families. These workers were supervised by the military and worked
long hours to earn their pay. They were given uniforms, nutritious meals (most
gained weight) and lived in camps. After work, mandatory classes taught them
reading and writing and some vocational training such as electrician.
Competitive events were held between camps during down time.
A 1930s forest study “suggests
that most of its woodlands were in relatively good shape. Only about 14.5
percent of land proposed for the park remained completely clear of timber and
most of the open tracts had been used for crops and pastureland.” (Shenandoah
National Park Official handbook, p. 46)
“Park promoters George
Pollock, Harold Allen, and George Judd had stretched the truth to the breaking
point when they described the proposed park on the Southern Appalachian
National Park Committee (SANPC) questionnaire. The land, they said, was ‘mostly
held in large holdings’ and ‘absolutely free’ of commercial improvement such as
farms, mines, factories, and development. However, the 327,000 acres surveyed
in 1927 comprised over 3,000 separate tracts (only about 20 over 1,000 acres)
with thousands of people living and working there.”
Congress had approved the
project but no money was appropriated to purchase the land and promoters began
a campaign to raise funds. Luray real estate broker L. Ferdinand Zerkel helped
raise $1.5 million to acquire parkland. (Shenandoah National Park Museum)
The road to removal and
relocation of the population residing within the proposed parkland included:
-
Virginia Governor
signs Public Parks Condemnation Act (March 1928) – “The Act allows the
Commission to take all the property in question without individual condemnation
proceedings”
-
Virginia Supreme
Court rejected the legal challenge to blanket condemnation by landowner Thomas
Jackson Rudacille (October 1929)
-
Miriam Sizer
proposes relocation for residents in April 1930 (Arno Cammerer of the National
Park Service agrees and begins to lobby for relocation)
-
Residents of the
park receive “Notices to vacate” (exceptions were made for ‘aged and especially
meritorious’ residents) in January 1934
Miriam Sizer, a typical elitist,
said, “The taking over of this area … means the scattering of a people who have
a primitive comprehension of what law means and who have little sense of the
responsibilities of citizenship.” She continued, “Thus the submerged mountain
individual [is] irresponsible, untrained…unfitted to meet the competition of
modern life…” (Shenandoah National Park Museum)
Sizer, a teacher hired in
1929 by George Freeman Pollock and some of his guests to run a summer “vacation
school” in the Blue Ridge Mountains, invited two sociologists, Mandel Sherman
and Cora Keys, to study her students. The sociologists hired Sizer to collect
additional data and published a controversial report. Using questionable
methods, the three “researchers” stereotyped the mountain residents who
vehemently disputed their portrayal. This
bogus study was used to determine the mountain residents’ fate. “At her
suggestion, the National Park Service hired her to produce additional data on
some of the families who would be affected by the proposed park. She then touted her ‘studies’ as proof the
residents could not take care of themselves and began to advocate relocating
the residents, promoting herself for a government position managing their
relocation and finances.” (Shenandoah National Park Museum)
According to park museum
documents, one mountain resident described their lives as follows: “We tended big corn fields, would go out on
them Monday mornings and work in them ‘til Saturday nights and then go back in
them Monday morning again.”
Removing people as
permanent residents on the landscape was a stumbling block to the dream of
building a large park in the East. There were promoted “fears” that excessive
logging would forever alter the landscape. Residents used fire to clear or
semi-clear areas for agriculture and hunting. Promoters of the park over-dramatized
the “fear of fire.” They failed to consider the “impact the establishment of
the park would have on those who lived within the proposed boundary.”
The federal land acquired
meandered around private land and disputes arose between agents and owners when
trespassing occurred. Additional land was needed in order to fix this problem.
Citizens protested the
proposed removal of land owners off their property by writing to editors. A
letter to the editor of “Page News and Courier” in Luray, Virginia said, “I
wish to arouse some objections to the proposed Park by the citizens of the area
and their sympathizers. In the first place to condemn our property so as to
make its commercial value less is contrary to the fundamental principles of our
government. … They take from us what they want, seek to make us helpless by
enacting condemnation laws before they approach us as owners, which clearly
shows that they are trying to get something for nothing at our expense.”
Robert Via, a landowner in
Albemarle County, who lost his case in Virginia, appealed to the Supreme Court,
challenging the blanket condemnation of properties. His lawyer said, “Whether
Virginia has the power to condemn land with the sole purpose of making it a
gift to the national government for national park purposes is the only question
we are bringing before this Court.” On November 25, 1935, the Supreme Court dismissed
the case, “declaring that Via had an adequate remedy at law.” Unfortunately,
Via decided not to continue his fight, thus deciding the fate of future eminent
domain cases, and “clearing the park’s last legal hurdle.”
According to the park
museum, Herbert Melanchton Cliser, a third generation resident, and his wife
Carrie, waged a six-year battle to keep their 46 acres farm, gasoline station,
and lunch counter famous for its country ham sandwiches and homemade pies. They
wrote letters of protest to local authorities, national park officials,
Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt. In a 1929 letter to the Page News and Courier,
Cliser said, “The fundamental principles of our government are to protect those
who can’t protect themselves, and to restrain the rich and strong from
oppressing the weak and poor… This thing of taking our property away from us is
a pretty business…” Cliser refused the $4,855 payment for his property. Cliser
and his wife were evicted in October 1935 by Page County law enforcement
officials. During the eviction proceeding, while handcuffed, Cliser sang the
National Anthem. (AP, October 3, 1935)
Landowners who were
removed from the land received $1,850,000 for 958 tracts purchased in 1934. To
get an idea of the purchasing power in 2009 dollars, multiply by sixteen. The park
museum lists some of the many individuals who did not receive fair value for
their land. One family got a check for $400 for a land that was worth almost
$7,000. Other families were forced to go on welfare.
-
H.E. Merchant
(Warren County, tract 109, 78 acres)
-
P.P., W.M., G.C.,
& R. B. Long (Page County, tracts 419 and 420, 940 acres)
-
Savilla Harrell
(Rappahannock County, tract 99, 160 acres)
-
Charley Nicholson
(Madison County, tract 237, one acre)
-
Myrtle Reynolds
(Greene County, tract 7, 7 acres)
-
N. Lester and
Anna Elizabeth Dean (Rockingham County, tract 57, 91 acres)
-
Edward A. Harris
(Albemarle County, tract 121, 75 acres)
-
A. H. Berry
(Augusta County, tract 54, 67 acres)
(Shenandoah
National Park Museum Archives)
In December 1935, the
federal government accepted title to more than 176,000 acres of parkland. Some
residents were still living in the area with the understanding that they would
be relocated. This relocation was completed in November 1938 when all but 78
residents with lifetime tenancy were moved outside park boundaries.
The Shenandoah National
Park was dedicated on July 3, 1936 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from
a platform built by his civilian army corps (CCC) in Big Meadows. FDR declared
Shenandoah National Park and its sister parks to be “in largest sense, a work
of conservation” dedicated to “this and to succeeding generations.”
Currently, the controversy
continues. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are luring farmers who hold
property adjacent to the park to enter into “conservation easements” with “viewshed
protection.” In exchange, high property taxes are lowered considerably. The
farmers/owners cannot alter the landscape in any way or, if they sell (land
values are rising), the new owners automatically sign on to the conservation
easement in perpetuity or for the time specified in the easement contract.
Local boards working with NGOs change zoning regulations to prevent any construction
or alteration to the land that would interfere with the “viewshed” from the Shenandoah
National Park.
