Shenandoah National Park

Park purpose

As stated in the foundation document:

Shenandoah National Park preserves and protects nationally significant natural and cultural resources, scenic beauty, and congressionally designated wilderness within Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge Mountains, and provides a broad range of opportunities for public enjoyment, recreation, inspiration, and stewardship.

Geography

The park encompasses parts of eight counties. On the west side of Skyline Drive they are, from northeast to southwest, Warren, Page, Rockingham, and Augusta counties. On the east side of Skyline Drive they are Rappahannock, Madison, Greene, and Albemarle counties. The park stretches for 105 miles (169 km) along Skyline Drive from near the town of Front Royal in the northeast to near the city of Waynesboro in the southwest. The park headquarters are located in Luray.

Geology

Shenandoah National Park lies along the Blue Ridge Mountains in north-central Virginia. These mountains form a distinct highland rising to elevations above 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Local topographic relief between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley exceeds 3,000 feet (900 m) at some locations. The crest of the range divides the Shenandoah River drainage basin, part of the Potomac River drainage, on the west side, from the James and Rappahannock River drainage basins on the east side.

Some of the rocks exposed in the park date to over one billion years in age, making them among the oldest in Virginia. Bedrock in the park includes Grenville-age granitic basement rocks (1.2–1.0 billion years old) and a cover sequence of metamorphosed Neoproterozoic (570–550 million years old) sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Swift Run and Catoctin formations. Columns of Catoctin Formation metamorphosed basalt can be seen at Compton Peak. Clastic rocks of the Chilhowee Group are of early Cambrian age (542–520 million years old). Quaternary surficial deposits are common and cover much of the bedrock throughout the park.

The park is located along the western part of the Blue Ridge anticlinorium, a regional-scale Paleozoic structure at the eastern margin of the Appalachian fold and thrust belt. Rocks within the park were folded, faulted, distorted, and metamorphosed during the late Paleozoic Alleghanian orogeny (325 to 260 million years ago). The rugged topography of Blue Ridge Mountains is a result of differential erosion during the Cenozoic, although some post-Paleozoic tectonic activity occurred in the region.

History

Creation of the park

Legislation to create a national park in the Appalachian mountains was first introduced by freshman Virginia congressman Henry D. Flood in 1901, but despite the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, failed to pass. The first national park was Yellowstone, in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It was signed into law in 1872. Yosemite National Park was created in 1890. When Congress created the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916, additional parks had maintained the western pattern (Crater Lake in 1902, Wind Cave in 1903, Mesa Verde in 1906, then Denali in 1917). Grand Canyon, Zion and Acadia were all created in 1919 during the administration of Virginia-born president Woodrow Wilson. Acadia finally broke the western mold, becoming the first eastern national park. It was also based on donations from wealthy private landowners. Stephen Mather, the first NPS director, saw a need for a national park in the southern states, and solicited proposals in his 1923 year-end report. In May 1926, Congress and President Calvin Coolidge authorized the NPS to acquire a minimum of 250,000 acres (390.6 sq mi; 1,011.7 km2) and a maximum of 521,000 acres (814.1 sq mi; 2,108.4 km2) to form Shenandoah National Park, and also authorized creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, the legislation also required that no federal funds would be used to acquire the land. Thus, Virginia needed to raise private funds, and could also authorize state funds and use its eminent domain (condemnation) power to acquire the land to create Shenandoah National Park.

Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate (and the late Congressman Flood's nephew), Harry F. Byrd supported the creation of Shenandoah National Park, as did his friend William E. Carson, a businessman who had become Virginia's first chairman of the Commission on Conservation and Development. Development of the western national parks had assisted tourism, which produced jobs, which Byrd and local politicians supported. The land that became Shenandoah park was scenic, mountainous, and had also lost about half of its trees to the Chestnut blight (which was incurable and affected trees as they reached maturity). However, it had been held as private property for over a century, so many farms and orchards existed. After Byrd became governor and convinced the legislature to appropriate $1 million for land acquisition and other work, Carson and his teams (including surveyors and his brother Kit who was Byrd's law partner) tried to figure out who owned the land. They found that it consisted of more than 5,000 parcels, some of them inhabited by tenant farmers or squatters (who were ineligible to receive compensation). Some landowners, including wealthy resort owner George Freeman Pollock and Luray Realtor and developer L. Ferdinand Zerkel, had long wanted the park created and had formed the Northern Virginia Park Association to win over the national park selection committee. However, many local families who had lived in the area for generations (especially people over 60 years old) did not want to sell their land, and some refused to sell at any price. Carson promised that if they sold to the commonwealth, they could still live on their homesteads for the rest of their lives. Carson also lobbied the new president, Herbert Hoover, who bought land to establish a vacation fishing camp near the headwaters of the Rapidan River (and would ultimately donate it to the park as he left office; it remains as Rapidan Camp).

Segregation and desegregation

In the early 1930s, the National Park Service began planning the park facilities and envisioned separate provisions for blacks and whites. At that time, in Jim Crow Virginia, racial segregation was the order of the day. In its transfer of the parkland to the federal government, Virginia initially attempted to ban African Americans entirely from the park but settled for enforcing its segregation laws in the park's facilities.

By the 1930s, there were several concessions operated by private firms within the area that would become the park, some going back to the late 19th century. These early private facilities at Skyland Resort, Panorama Resort, and Swift Run Gap were operated only for whites. By 1937, the Park Service accepted a bid from Virginia Sky-Line Company to take over the existing facilities and add new lodges, cabins, and other amenities, including Big Meadows Lodge. Under their plan, all the sites in the parks, save one, were for "whites only". Their plan included a separate facility for African Americans at Lewis Mountain—a picnic ground, a smaller lodge, cabins and a campground. The site opened in 1939, and it was substantially inferior to the other park facilities. By then, however, the Interior Department was increasingly anxious to eliminate segregation from all parks. Pinnacles picnic ground was selected to be the initial integrated site in the Shenandoah, but Virginia Sky-Line Company continued to balk, and distributed maps showing Lewis Mountain as the only site for African Americans. During World War II, concessions closed, and park usage plunged. But once the War ended, in December 1945, the NPS mandated that all concessions in all national parks were to be desegregated. In October 1947 the dining rooms of Lewis Mountain and Panorama were integrated and by early 1950, the mandate was fully accomplished.

Social history

Particularly after the 1960s, park operations broadened from nature-focused to include social history. The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club had restored some cabins beginning in the 1940s and made them available to overnight hikers. Some displaced residents (and their descendants) created the Children of the Shenandoah to lobby for more balanced presentations.

In the 1990s, the park hired cultural resource specialists and conducted an archeological inventory of existing structures, the Survey of Rural Mountain Settlement. Eventually, the park's new focus on cultural resources coincided with agitation from a descendant's organization known as the Children of Shenandoah, which resulted in the removal of questionable interpretive displays. Hikes and tours that explained the social history of the displaced mountain people began.

Attractions

Skyline Drive

The park is best known for Skyline Drive, a 105-mile (169 km) road that runs the length of the park along the ridge of the mountains. 101 miles (163 km) of the Appalachian Trail are also in the park. In total, there are over 500 miles (800 km) of trails within the park. There is also horseback riding, camping, bicycling, and a number of waterfalls. The Skyline Drive is the first National Park Service road east of the Mississippi River listed as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also designated as a National Scenic Byway.

Backcountry camping

Shenandoah National Park offers 196,000 acres (306.2 sq mi; 793.2 km2) of backcountry and wilderness camping. While in the backcountry, campers must use a "Leave No Trace" policy that includes burying excrement and not building campfires.

Backcountry campers must also be careful of wildlife such as bears and venomous snakes. Campers must suspend their food from trees while not in use in "bear bags" or park-approved bear canisters to prevent unintentionally feeding the bears, who then become habituated to humans and their food and therefore dangerous. All animals are protected by federal law.

Lodging

Most of the campgrounds are open from April to October–November. There are five major campgrounds:

Mathews Arm Campground

Big Meadows Campground

Lewis Mountain Campground

Loft Mountain Campground

Dundo Group Campground

There are several lodges/cabins in the park:

Skyland Resort

Big Meadows

Lewis Mountain Cabins

Potomac Appalachian Trail Club public use cabins

Lodges are located at Skyland and Big Meadows. The park's Harry F. Byrd Visitor Center is also located at Big Meadows. Another visitor center is located at Dickey Ridge. Campgrounds are located at Mathews Arm, Big Meadows, Lewis Mountain, and Loft Mountain.

Rapidan Camp, the restored presidential fishing retreat Herbert Hoover built on the Rapidan River in 1929, is accessed by a 4.1-mile (6.6 km) round-trip hike on Mill Prong Trail, which begins on the Skyline Drive at Milam Gap (Mile 52.8). The NPS also offers guided van trips that leave from the Byrd Center at Big Meadows.

Shenandoah National Park is one of the most dog-friendly in the national park system. The campgrounds all allow dogs, and dogs are allowed on almost all of the trails including the Appalachian Trail, if kept on leash (6 feet or shorter). Dogs are not allowed on ten trails: Fox Hollow Trail, Stony Man Trail, Limberlost Trail, Post Office Junction to Old Rag Shelter, Old Rag Ridge Trail, Old Rag Saddle Trail, Dark Hollow Falls Trail, Story of the Forest Trail, Bearfence Mountain Trail, Frazier Discovery Trail. These ten trails fall short of a total of 20 miles of the 500 miles of trails of the Shenandoah National Park.

Waterfalls

Many waterfalls are located within the park boundaries. Below is a list of significant falls.

Hiking trails

Beginning at mile 50.7 of the Skyline Drive near the Byrd Visitor Center, Dark Hollow Falls Trail leads downhill beside Hogcamp Branch to Dark Hollow Falls, a 70 ft (21 m) cascade. The distance from the trailhead to the base of the falls is 0.7 mi (1.1 km), although the trail continues beyond that point, crossing the creek and connecting with the Rose River fire road. Various fauna can be viewed along the trail, including occasional sightings of black bears and timber rattlesnakes. While the trail is relatively short, parts of it are steep and may prove challenging to some visitors. There is no view from the brink of the falls, and slippery rocks make it inadvisable to leave the trail.

Climate

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Shenandoah National Park has a humid continental climate with warm summers and no dry season (Dfb). According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the plant hardiness zone at Big Meadows Visitor Center (3514 ft / 1071 m) is 6a with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of -7.1 °F (-21.7 °C).

Ecology

The climate of the park and its flora and fauna are typical for mountainous regions of the eastern Mid-Atlantic woodland, while a large portion of common species are also typical of ecosystems at lower altitudes. A. W. Kuchler's potential natural vegetation type for the park is Appalachian oak (104) within an eastern hardwood forest vegetation form (25), also known as a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest.

Pines predominate on the southwestern faces of some of the southernmost hillsides, where an occasional prickly pear cactus may also grow naturally. In contrast, some of the northeastern aspects are most likely to have small but dense stands of moisture loving hemlocks and mosses in abundance. Other commonly found plants include oak, hickory, chestnut, maple, tulip poplar, mountain laurel, milkweed, daisies, and many species of ferns. The once predominant American chestnut tree was effectively brought to extinction by a fungus known as the chestnut blight during the 1930s; though the tree continues to grow in the park, it does not reach maturity and dies back before it can reproduce. Various species of oaks superseded the chestnuts and became the dominant tree species. Gypsy moth infestations beginning in the early 1990s began to erode the dominance of the oak forests as the moths would primarily consume the leaves of oak trees. Though the gypsy moths seem to have abated, they continue to affect the forest and have destroyed almost ten percent of the oak groves.

Wildlife

Mammals include black bear, coyote, striped skunk, spotted skunk, raccoon, beaver, river otter, opossum, woodchuck, bobcat, two species of foxes, white-tailed deer, and eastern cottontail rabbit. Though unsubstantiated, there have been some reported sightings of cougar in remote areas of the park. Over 200 species of birds make their home in the park for at least part of the year. About thirty live in the park year-round, including the barred owl, Carolina chickadee, red-tailed hawk, and wild turkey. The peregrine falcon was reintroduced into the park in the mid-1990s and by the end of the 20th century there were numerous nesting pairs in the park. Thirty-two species of fish have been documented in the park, including brook trout, longnose and eastern blacknose dace, and the bluehead chub.

Ranger programs

Park rangers organize several programs from spring to fall. These include ranger-led hikes, as well as discussions of the history, flora, and fauna. Shenandoah Live is an online series where listeners may chat live with rangers and learn about some of the park's features. Rangers discuss a wide range of topics while answering questions and talking with experts from the field.

Artist-in-Residence Program

In 2014, under the leadership of Superintendent Jim Northup, Shenandoah National Park established an Artist-in-Residence Program that is administered by the Shenandoah National Park Trust, the park's philanthropic partner. Photographer Sandy Long was selected as the park's first artist-in-residence. The results of Long's residency were featured in the photography exhibit "Wild Beauty: The Artful Nature of Shenandoah National Park" held at the Looking Glass Art Gallery in the historic Hawley Silk Mill, in Hawley, Pennsylvania.