Shenandoah

Shenandoah National Park, a U.S. national park in Virginia, covers a section of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Its shape is long and narrow, bordered on the west by the Shenandoah River and its wide valley, and on the east by the rolling Virginia Piedmont. The main road through the park is Skyline Drive, which generally follows the mountain ridgeline. Nearly 40% of the park—79,579 acres—is designated wilderness, protected under the National Wilderness Preservation System. The highest point is Hawksbill Mountain, rising to 4,051 feet.

The park’s purpose, as stated in its foundation document, is to preserve and protect nationally significant natural and cultural resources, scenic beauty, and congressionally designated wilderness within Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge Mountains, while offering a broad range of opportunities for public enjoyment, recreation, inspiration, and stewardship.

Geographically, the park spans parts of eight counties. On the west side of Skyline Drive, from northeast to southwest, are Warren, Page, Rockingham, and Augusta counties. On the east side are Rappahannock, Madison, Greene, and Albemarle counties. Skyline Drive runs 105 miles, from near Front Royal in the northeast to near Waynesboro in the southwest. Park headquarters are in Luray.

Geologically, the park sits along the Blue Ridge Mountains in north-central Virginia. These mountains form a distinct highland, with elevations above 4,000 feet. Local relief between the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah Valley exceeds 3,000 feet in some spots. The mountain crest divides the Shenandoah River drainage (part of the Potomac system) on the west from the James and Rappahannock drainages on the east. Some rocks in the park are over one billion years old, among the oldest in Virginia. Bedrock includes Grenville-age granitic basement rocks (1.2–1.0 billion years old) and a cover of metamorphosed Neoproterozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks from the Swift Run and Catoctin formations (570–550 million years old). Columns of Catoctin basalt can be seen at Compton Peak. Clastic rocks of the Chilhowee Group date to the early Cambrian (542–520 million years old). Quaternary surficial deposits are common and cover much of the bedrock. The park lies along the western part of the Blue Ridge anticlinorium, a Paleozoic structure at the eastern edge of the Appalachian fold and thrust belt. Rocks were folded, faulted, distorted, and metamorphosed during the late Paleozoic Alleghanian orogeny (325–260 million years ago). The rugged topography results from differential erosion during the Cenozoic, though some post-Paleozoic tectonic activity occurred.

The park’s creation began with legislation introduced in 1901 by freshman Virginia congressman Henry D. Flood, but it failed despite President Theodore Roosevelt’s support. Yellowstone, the first national park, was signed into law in 1872; Yosemite followed in 1890. When the National Park Service was created in 1916, additional parks maintained a western pattern (Crater Lake in 1902, Wind Cave in 1903, Mesa Verde in 1906, Denali in 1917). Grand Canyon, Zion, and Acadia were created in 1919 under Virginia-born President Woodrow Wilson. Acadia broke the western mold as the first eastern national park, based on donations from wealthy private landowners. Stephen Mather, the first NPS director, saw a need for a southern national park and solicited proposals in his 1923 year-end report. In May 1926, Congress and President Calvin Coolidge authorized the NPS to acquire between 250,000 and 521,000 acres for Shenandoah National Park, and also authorized Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, no federal funds could be used for land acquisition. Virginia had to raise private funds, use state funds, and exercise eminent domain to acquire the land. Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Harry F. Byrd (Flood’s nephew) supported the park, as did his friend William E. Carson, the state’s first chairman of the Commission on Conservation and Development. Western national parks had boosted tourism and jobs, which Byrd and local politicians favored. The land destined for the park was scenic and mountainous, but about half its trees had been lost to the incurable chestnut blight. Still, it had been privately held for over a century, with many farms and orchards. After Byrd became governor and secured a $1 million appropriation for land acquisition, Carson and his teams (including surveyors and Byrd’s law partner, Kit Carson) worked to identify owners. They found over 5,000 parcels, some inhabited by tenant farmers or squatters ineligible for compensation. Some landowners, such as wealthy resort owner George Freeman Pollock and Luray developer L. Ferdinand Zerkel, had long wanted the park created.