To truly understand Shenandoah National Park is to know her stories. Shenandoah is a natural world of air, water, trees and rocks, plants and animals. Entwined in this natural world is a human history: the people who lived here; the people who establish and built the park; all the traces of human life which remain today. These, too, are among the stories of the park.The true beginning of Shenandoah National Park is over a billion years ago, when magma deep beneath the earth's surface moved upward, eventually to become the park's granite peaks. Eons later, after many geographic and geologic changes, Native Americans began the human history of the park area, followed by the early European settlers and mountain residents.

In the 20th century, human beings have continued to make the history of what is now the park; those who envisioned and established the park; those who built Skyland, Rapidan Camp, and the Skyline Drive; those who cleared the Appalachian Trail; those who worked here as part of the CCC. Today, everyone who visits or works here is becoming a part of the history of Shenandoah National Park for future generations.

Shenandoah National Park includes 300 square miles of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the southern Appalachians. The park rises above the Virginia Piedmont to its east and the Shenandoah Valley to its west. Two peaks exceed 4,000 feet. The range of elevation, slopes and aspects, rocks and soils, precipitation, and latitude create a mix of habitats.

Tens of thousands of living creatures make their homes in the park, from black bear resting beneath rock overhangs, to tiny aquatic insects darting through cool mountain streams. The park's many worlds are fascinating to explore.Before the Park.
For at least 10,000 years people have lived on the Blue Ridge Mountains. Prehistoric humans have hunted and gathered game, fruit, nuts, and berries on the upland slopes, and some may have constructed permanent villages at the lowest elevations near the piedmont and Shenandoah Valley. The earliest European settlers moved into the lower areas of the mountain range by the mid-18th century, ever moving upward in search of land for farming, grazing, and orchards. Later, some owners purchased mountain land for the extraction of resources: copper, lumber, bark for tanning of leather, and water power for the operation of mills. Others early saw the beauty of the Blue Ridge as a commercial product in itself, and built resorts catering to visitors from the cities.

Shenandoah''s is a long history, filled with many themes and tales. Some are known, many are being researched, and others await future study.

Creating a National Park.
The establishment of Shenandoah National Park in 1935 was the culmination of an effort that took almost four decades. It was the result of the efforts of many people with many different motivations. Some saw the creation of the park as a significant effort in environmental preservation, others as an important step in providing a healthy outlet for the needs of a growing urban population, and some saw a national park as a means to bolster Virginia''s economy through tourism. All of the these would be proven correct in time.

But the early boosters did not, at first, take into account the impact park establishment would have on the families that owned land and lived within the park boundary. Nor did they envision the traumatic events that would be initiated in late October, 1929. The Great Depression, its impact on two Presidents, and the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, are themes that are intimately woven into the fabric of the park story.

Shenandoah National Park Today.
Shenandoah National Park today approaches 200,000 acres. Forty percent of the area is Congressionally designated wilderness. Hiking in some wilderness areas of the park a visitor can easily feel that they, alone, are the first to brush past the mountain laurel, to spook the flock of turkey, or to stop an examine the trailing Arbutus in the thick humus and duff of the forest floor. But then, the same visitor stops at a row of fieldstone, unmarked but linearly precise?mute testimony to a cultural past.

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