1934-38: The departure of the mountain people
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K.W. Stanley / News Virginian
Published: March 4, 2008
During the mid-1700s Germans, English, Celts and Scots-Irish settlers obtained land patents in the Shenandoah Valley, on the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah Mountains. Five thousand residents once lived on the mountains between Waynesboro and Front Royal. These mountaineers decreased to 465 families by 1934. Fifty percent were tenants who attended cattle owned by Valley farmers. Thirty percent were squatters who did not own the land. Others had purchased property.
Many mountaineer families practiced subsistence farming, living off the land and bartering goods in trade. Following the Civil War, the Valley economy changed to a cash economy. This change in the form of trade challenged mountaineer families who were dependant upon the nuts, berries, roots, vegetables, wild game and forests found on the mountains. Chestnut trees provided wood for logging, bark for sale to valley tanneries, logs for cabins, rail fences and heat. Trees were logged and sold to mills or converted to charcoal, then sold to foundries for smelting iron ore. Many traded chestnuts, berries and fruits to Valley stores for supplies and hired out as seasonal workers on farms and in orchards to earn cash for supplies. Some converted corn to moonshine to earn cash for basics such as flour, salt, sugar, coffee, cloth and boots.
Most lived in log houses and kept a vegetable garden, hogs, chickens, a cow and a horse. These families used an iron stove for cooking, a washtub or nearby streams for bathing, and a spring to keep butter and milk. By the 1920s, an Asian blight destroyed chestnut forests, decimating the mountaineers' economy. Girls of 15 married young men from nearby gaps and hollows.
Between 1901 and 1935, other actions occurred that resulted in the removal of families from the Blue Ridge. Congressmen discussed establishing a national park west of Washington. Valley businessmen organized a Regional Chamber of Commerce that supported Skyland as a park site. Congress financed a study which proposed the Shenandoah National Park (SNP) be established with Virginia purchasing the land. Pledges of $1.25 million were secured by the SNP Association Inc. to purchase the land. Congress approved the SNP contingent upon Virginia donating 327,000 acres. The Virginia General Assembly approved a condemnation law in 1927 to acquire all titles to land in the park. These titles were accepted by the Federal Government in 1935.
Many families relocated off the mountain between 1926 and 1934 as game decreased, the chestnut blight decimated forests and mountain businesses (apple orchards and timbering) declined. In February 1934, Arno Cammerer, SNP Director, ordered all inhabitants to vacate park property. By 1938, 172 mountain families were relocated to seven resettlement communities with a total of 6,391 acres bordering the SNP. Relocation sites were in the counties of Page, Rockingham, Greene, Madison and Rappahannock. Forty-two elderly residents were allowed to live out their lives within the SNP. Annie Shenk, the last SNP resident, died in 1979 at age 92.
K.W. Stanley is a Waynesboro resident, historian and TNV correspondent. Contact him at .
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