Occupied Park: Residents, Missionaries, and Conservationists in the Creation of Shenandoah National Park

Eminent domain law influenced by American colonial laws in the Philippines forced thousands of Appalachians off their land to create Shenandoah National Park (SNP) in the 1930s. The fledgling park hosted the second ever CCC camp—a flagship New Deal program employing young men to develop infrastructure for outdoor recreation. Their mission in SNP was to transform the Blue Ridge Mountains into a majestic national park. The catch: thousands of people remained on the land with special permits. Mountain residents resided and worked alongside the same people responsible for carrying out eviction orders. As the story of one CCC boy refusing to raze his aunt’s house indicates, the creation of Shenandoah National Park was familial, emotional, and not strictly a story of government action.

While the bureaucratic and legal processes which led to the park receive consistent analysis, the liminal space imposed upon residents does not. My work exposes the period from 1931 to 1940 when Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains became a landscape contested by multiple parties at once. Episcopal missionaries and federal welfare services attempted to help residents; the Civilian Conservation Corps and National Park Service constructed a mountaintop roadway and the infrastructure for a national park; residents continued farming the land and maintaining their businesses. Clashes and interactions among these groups were cultural, romantic, political, and in some cases, fatal. This project thus seeks to restore historical agency to the diversity of voices and groups involved in the creation of Shenandoah National Park.

I argue for the importance of these stories not only in the historiography of Shenandoah National Park, but the National Park Service and New Deal as well. From the Philippines to D.C., the ebbs of early-20^th century America deeply intertwine with Shenandoah’s. Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, William Green, and Rexford Tugwell, among other titans of the New Deal, play influential roles in the nine-year occupation. Less studied, but featured in my work, are the Supreme Court of the Philippines judge who helped write the condemnation law, the Virginia Commission on Conservation and Development, and the residents who took tremendous risk to resist the park.

At the heart of my research are the removed persons and the landscape itself. Both require a visual component to adequately explain, lending themselves to a poster format. Appalachian stereotypes expressed through manipulated photography and documentaries provided justification for removal. I plan to repurpose those images alongside more accurate narratives of the mountain residents. CCC photography further illuminates the massive land transformation the mountains underwent from agricultural to recreational. Maps best facilitate understanding of the park’s ever-shifting boundaries and property rights.