The Shadow
The year was 1928. In April, representatives from thirteen Virginia counties met in Staunton for the fifth annual meeting of Shenandoah Valley, Inc., a regional Chamber of Commerce formed primarily to create a national park that would preserve the natural beauty of the Blue Ridge for future generations and also rival Yellowstone in attracting visitors and their vacation dollars.
The Alleghany County contingent included 38-year-old Covington Chamber of Commerce secretary Ben C. Moomaw, who would later lead the effort to build a dam on the Jackson River north of Covington. He was joined by Richard C. Stokes, age 45, a noted Covington attorney and Chamber board member who had served on the staff of the previous governor of Virginia. Stokes had been an early proponent of the Shenandoah effort and was currently a vice-regional director.
As Staunton’s Daily News Leader reported, the Alleghany group had an outsized impact on the proceedings. Moomaw opened the afternoon session with a speech describing how Covington had worked with state officials the previous year to entice Rayon to build its new plant there. Stokes followed with “a highly eloquent address on the advantages of the Shenandoah Valley” that “held his audience spellbound with the flow of his language.” They joined other speakers in urging state leaders to take the steps necessary to create the Shenandoah National Park.
The first goal of the Alleghany leaders had been to enlist the regional group in supporting the final stretch of the Midland Trail from Lexington to the West Virginia state line. Completed later the same year, this provided a paved transcontinental highway from San Francisco to the Chesapeake Bay. Covington itself was experiencing explosive growth. Its population had increased by a factor of eight since 1890 and fifty businesses were operating in town. With the new highway and the prospect of a nearby national park, city leaders anticipated a bright future.
The enthusiastic supporters of the National Park plan could not have foreseen the property battles and government actions that were yet to come. The main issue was how to deal with the people who already lived on the Blue Ridge. In her 2014 book Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal, Sue Eisenfeld wrote that park planners assumed the 521,000-acre area proposed in 1926 was mostly wilderness. However, surveyors reported back that the government would need to buy some 5,650 tracts of land at an average of $21 per acre. Park opponents also pointed out that much of the area’s “primeval wilderness” had been clearcut and was now open grazing land. Planners responded by trimming the park footprint down to 327,000 acres. In May 1928, Virginia “condemned” this land and donated it all to the federal government. The area was home to about 16,000 people, including many families who had lived there for several generations.
Next, the surveyors found that many Blue Ridge residents did not have proper titles to their land or could not identify their property boundaries. Some land claims dated back to the 1600s. In 1931, the park was reduced again to 160,000 acres, in the shape of what a critic sarcastically called “a fish skeleton.” While the approved park was limited to this area, the government kept the right to purchase the additional land it had acquired in 1928 – a right it retains to this day.
Over the next few years many residents accepted buyout offers, but others refused. Some filed lawsuits. The government and media responded with a smear campaign. The Washington Evening Star called the mountain residents “hidden communities of backward, illiterate people living in medieval squalor.” One article claimed they had “never seen the American flag or heard the Lord’s Prayer.” The National Park Service hired a sociologist who concluded that it was vitally important to relocate and support these people so they could live useful, successful lives.
Gradually, courts resolved the various lawsuits, ruling that the government could indeed use eminent domain to acquire the remaining properties. As the Great Depression set in, most residents cashed their checks and moved down from the mountain to start again elsewhere.
The Secretary of the Interior had promised that no one would be forced to move unless they were directly in the path of a proposed development such as Skyline Drive. In February 1934, newly appointed National Park Service director Arno Cammerer reversed course, saying, “We must have a real park and not a make-believe one cluttered up with tenants and land occupants.”
At that point 465 families remained on the mountain. The government bought land in nearby valley towns, built cheap box houses, and moved some residents there. A few others signed permits limiting the use of their properties and were granted temporary or lifetime residency.
By December 1935, twenty families still refused to move or sign permits. Virginia authorities broke the deadlock by forcibly evicting them during the following months – in some cases going so far as to handcuff the residents and drag them away – and burning their homes to the ground.
Fifteen thousand people attended the dedication on July 6, 1936. President Roosevelt gave a speech offering the park to the American people as a place for “recreation and re-creation.”
Shenandoah National Park Today (U.S. Geological Survey)
Proposed Shenandoah National Park Areas in 1926, 1928, and 1931 (National Park Service)
