Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Skyline Drive & Shenandoah National Park About this episode Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park is a scenic road tied to the “See America First” movement of the early 20th century. The acquisition of land for the project was difficult, and displaced many families from their homes.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:05 Speaker 01 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
0:28 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare.
1:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:28 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. I went on a trip to Asheville, North Carolina, a couple of weeks ago. That's always been one of my favorite places, but I don't think I had been back there since moving to Massachusetts. Parts of that whole region have only barely started to recover from Hurricane Helene, which weakened to a tropical storm as it moved over Georgia, but it still produced truly devastating destruction in the southern Appalachian Mountains. But while I was there, I talked to a lot of people who worked in hotels and restaurants and shops and galleries around Asheville, and they were all very anxious for tourism to get back toward its
2:53 Tracy V. Wilson? normal levels there. One of the things that I did on this trip was I drove the small stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway that is open near Asheville at this point. I stopped at the Folk Arts Center, which is at one end of that open section. And there was a historical display outside about construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway that made me think, you know, that might be a really good episode. The Blue Ridge Parkway was inspired by another kind of similar scenic drive, which is Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, which the Blue Ridge Parkway also connects to. So my plan was to have an episode where we
3:36 Tracy V. Wilson? talked a little bit about Skyline Drive and then focused the rest of the time on the Blue Ridge Parkway. But during my whole note-taking process, Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park evolved into their own entire episode. So that's today's episode. If you've been like, Tracy, why are you talking about the Blue Ridge Parkway? That one's actually going to be on Wednesday. This isn't really a two-parter. It's more like two episodes that have some interconnectedness. So if you're one of the folks who likes to listen to the two-parters together, I think in this case, you don't really need to wait. Like, there are some points where these two stories touch each other, but this isn't exactly a two-part episode.
4:21 Holly Frey? So we'll start with a little background on the national parks. The first national park in the United States was created under the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, which President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law in 1872. This act, quote, "set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park."
4:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Under this law, this tract of land was, quote, "hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and all persons who shall locate or settle upon or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed therefrom."
5:16 Holly Frey? This law placed Yellowstone under the control of the Secretary of the Interior, who was directed to create rules and regulations to, quote, "provide for the preservation from injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park and their retention in their natural condition. Any structures built on the designated land were to be for the accommodation of visitors. Fish and game were to be protected from, quote, 'wanton destruction,' and from their capture or destruction for the purposes of profit." Under this law, anyone settling on or occupying land in Yellowstone would be considered a trespasser and removed.
6:00 Tracy V. Wilson? This act was ostensibly about conserving and preserving Yellowstone and its natural wonders, but it really didn't make any provisions or exceptions for the indigenous peoples who had been living on, using, and acting as stewards of this land since time immemorial. While some tribes and nations were still supposed to have fishing or hunting rights by treaty, later legislation made that explicitly illegal.
6:28 Holly Frey? In other words, federal policy and the whole mindset around the national parks framed Yellowstone as an untouched wilderness, rather than as a place where people had been living, hunting, gathering, and harvesting for thousands of years. The fish, game, and plants in the park had been a vital source of food for indigenous peoples, and those protected mineral deposits included sources of obsidian that indigenous people had been using to make tools and projectile points. Yellowstone also holds a deep spiritual significance for a number of indigenous nations, and it's considered sacred. The federal government forcibly removed indigenous peoples who had been living on
7:10 Holly Frey? or using the land in Yellowstone, including the Tucadica, to reservations outside the bounds of the park, and publicly presented a fiction that Yellowstone had always been uninhabited and unused.
7:25 Tracy V. Wilson? This included a pretty insulting, made-up story about how indigenous people didn't come to Yellowstone because they were afraid of the geysers. I do want to say I love the national parks. I'm glad that we have them. There are complicated things that I do not like about their history. We'll talk about that a bit more in a second. After the creation of Yellowstone, other national parks followed. That included Yosemite National Park in 1890. We talked about Yosemite in a two-parter that ran on August 8th and 10th of 2016. And through the 19th and early 20th centuries, the creation of these parks generally followed a really similar pattern.
8:07 Tracy V. Wilson? They were formed from federal land under legislation that framed it as being conserved and protected for the people. But the United States had obtained this land through warfare, genocide, and exploitive treaties with the indigenous peoples, and then the government forcibly removed those people from the land, while maintaining this fiction that the park was protecting something that was pristine and untouched by humanity.
8:34 Holly Frey? So we can't really cover the entire history of indigenous peoples' relationships to these parks in one episode, but more than a century would pass before the federal government started to take an approach that was more cooperative and collaborative than when these parks were established. It's also not really clear at this point how the Trump administration will be approaching co-stewardship agreements that were signed under the Biden administration.
9:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I think a lot of those agreements were a step in addressing some of the historical wrongs of these parks. In 1916, the National Park Service Act, also known as the Organic Act, created the National Park Service. Like the first national parks, the National Park Service was established under the Department of the Interior. In the words of this act, quote, "The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conformed to the fundamental purposes of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to
9:43 Tracy V. Wilson? conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
10:01 Holly Frey? Most of the US population lived in the eastern half of the country, but with the exception of Mackinac National Park, which had been on Mackinac Island and Lake Huron from 1875 to 1895, there were no national parks east of the Mississippi River when the National Park Service was founded. That changed with the creation of Acadia National Park, originally known as Lafayette National Park, in 1919. Acadia is in Maine, so it was closer to people in the eastern US than the parks in the West were, but it still really wasn't convenient to major cities in the East.
10:38 Tracy V. Wilson? So Stephen T. Mather, first director of the National Park Service, advocated for the creation of a park that was closer to some of the major eastern cities. He convinced Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work to appoint a committee to find a place for a park specifically in the southern Appalachian Mountains, ideally within an easy drive of Washington DC. To that end, the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee was established in 1924. Please don't come at me for how I said Appalachian.
11:12 Holly Frey? That same year, Congress passed legislation to authorize and fund the construction and reconstruction of roads, trails, and bridges in the national parks, which was becoming more of a necessity as more people had access to cars. At this point, the Good Roads Movement was well underway, having started in the late 19th century after the development of practical and affordable bicycles. We talked about this more in our episode on Kitty Knox and the Bike Boom that came out on January 9th, 2023. By the 1920s, the Good Roads Movement's focus had shifted more to the needs of cars and motorists rather than bicycles and cyclists. In 1924, when this law was passed,
11:55 Holly Frey? the US had a population of about 114 million people, and there were about 16 million cars on the road.
12:03 Tracy V. Wilson? This was also tied to the "See America First" movement. That slogan was coined in the early 20th century, encouraging people to travel along these newly established roads and the railroads, including going to the national parks, to travel and vacation in the United States rather than going to Europe.
12:25 Holly Frey? After the passage of this 1924 legislation, the National Park Service worked out a memorandum of agreement with the Bureau of Public Roads, which would later be known as the Federal Highway Administration. This agreement laid out standards for the survey, construction, and improvement of roads and trails in the national parks and national monuments. The Bureau of Public Roads provided engineers and technical expertise, while the National Park Service provided landscape architects who focused on designing roadways that had a naturalistic design. The actual road construction was typically done by private firms under contract to the BPR.
13:05 Tracy V. Wilson? So all of this, the roads and this agreement and the See America First movement, was part of the creation of Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive. We'll have more on that after a sponsor break.
13:21 Speaker 01 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
13:44 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
13:47 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
14:07 Speaker 04 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
14:15 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
14:22 Speaker 00 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
14:27 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
14:31 Speaker 00 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
14:35 Speaker 04 With the fan's experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
14:39 Tracy V. Wilson? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts. So you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors.
15:24 Tracy V. Wilson? Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:51 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
16:34 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
17:00 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1924, the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee developed a questionnaire to solicit public feedback about possible locations for a national park. The committee traveled all around the Southern Appalachian Mountains. They mainly looked at sites in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. But some of the members also went to West Virginia, Alabama, and Kentucky. Every state that was under consideration was interested in this project due to the potential to bring in tourism dollars and to have federal investments into the roads and other infrastructure that would be needed to support the park. So cities and towns all around hosted all kinds of festivals and whatnot to try to attract attention.
17:46 Holly Frey? The committee was looking for sites that met these criteria. Quote, "One, mountain scenery with inspiring perspectives and delightful details. Two, areas sufficiently extensive and adaptable so that annually millions of visitors might enjoy the benefits of outdoor life and communion with nature without the confusion of overcrowding. Three, a substantial part to contain forests, shrubs and flowers, and mountain streams with picturesque cascades and waterfalls overhung with foliage, all untouched by the hand of man. Four, abundant springs and streams available for camps and fishing.
18:28 Holly Frey? Five, opportunities for protecting and developing the wildlife of the area and the whole to be a natural museum, preserving outstanding features of the southern Appalachians as they appeared in the early pioneer days. Six, accessibility by rail and road."
18:46 Tracy V. Wilson? In their report, the committee wrote that, quote, "Several areas were found that contained topographic features of great scenic value, where waterfalls, cascades, cliffs and mountain peaks with beautiful valleys lying in their midst gave ample assurance that any or all of these areas were possible for development into a national park, which would compare favorably with any of the existing national parks in the West. All that has saved these nearby regions from spoliation for so long a time has been their inaccessibility and the difficulty of profitably exploiting the timber wealth that mantles the steep mountain slopes.
19:30 Tracy V. Wilson? With rapidly increasing shortage and mounting values of forest products, however, we face the immediate danger that the last remnants of our primeval forests will be destroyed, however remote, on steep mountainside or hidden away in deep lonely cove they may be."
19:50 Holly Frey? Ultimately, the committee recommended the creation of a park in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. It noted that this site was within about a three-hour drive of Washington DC and was within about a day's drive of 40 million people. And it described what it thought would be the park's greatest single feature. Quote, "A possible skyline drive along the mountain top, following a continuous ridge and looking down westerly on the Shenandoah Valley, some 2,500 to 3,500 feet below, and also commanding a view of the Piedmont Plain stretching easterly to the Washington Monument, which landmark of our national capital may be seen on a clear day.
20:32 Holly Frey? Few scenic drives in the world could surpass it."
20:36 Tracy V. Wilson? In other words, this recommended park would be a place where people could hike and fish and camp and picnic and learn all about plants and wildlife and get away from the noise and the pollution of the city. And it would also be a scenic drive that you could travel by car.
20:51 Holly Frey? The committee also recommended a second location roughly 300 miles south of the first, in the great Smoky Mountains on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. The committee thought this site was superior, quote, "because of the height of mountains, depth of valleys, ruggedness of the area, and the unexampled variety of trees, shrubs, and plants." But the Smokies also presented some challenges that the land in Virginia did not, including that it was very rugged with higher elevations, which would make road and park development more difficult. The Smokies also seemed to be prone to excessive rainfall, something that the committee couldn't really quantify but thought should be studied more thoroughly.
21:36 Tracy V. Wilson? When Secretary of the Interior Hubert Wark passed these recommendations on to the House Committee on the Public Lands, he said in part, quote, "recognizing the tremendous popularity and value of the national park system in its service to our people, it is my opinion that a definite policy should be adopted by the government for the creation of additional national parks in the eastern section for the public use and general welfare of its millions of inhabitants." Most of these live in densely populated communities and cannot afford the time or the money required to visit the Western national parks. The East contributes its share to the upkeep and maintenance
22:21 Tracy V. Wilson? of the existing national park system, and for that reason, too, should be entitled to recognition.
22:28 Holly Frey? There were immediate calls for public support for this proposed park. For example, the committee's report to Secretary Work was printed in National Parks and Conservation Magazine alongside a notice "To the Women of America" by Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman, president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. It said in part, "The General Federation of Women's Clubs is a service organization. The Women of America constitute the largest body for service in the world, and there are none more devoted. I appeal not to General Federation Women only, but to the Women of America to support wholeheartedly and enthusiastically the Choice of Secretary Works Committee.
23:13 Holly Frey? Our national park system is a service system, or it is nothing."
23:18 Tracy V. Wilson? I am glad you read that part because the last sentence makes me cry.
23:23 Holly Frey? We've had good fortune in handing off the cry bits to the other person lately.
23:28 Tracy V. Wilson? We sure have. The, so Congress passed legislation authorizing the creation of both of the recommended parks, which President Calvin Coolidge signed into law on May 22, 1926. The site in Virginia would become Shenandoah National Park, and the site in North Carolina and Tennessee would become Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Three days after that, Coolidge also signed legislation approving the establishment of Mammoth Cave National Park.
23:59 Holly Frey? There was a big difference between these three parks and the ones that had been established in the West. Yellowstone, Yosemite, and others had been created from land that the federal government already purportedly owned. So the government was setting aside land to serve as a park without having to make arrangements or spend the money to acquire it. But the land for these three parks was privately owned, mostly by small individual landowners. It would require a lot of time, money, and work to buy all of that land and then transition it into a park.
24:34 Tracy V. Wilson? The Southern Appalachian National Park Committee had referenced this situation in its report, saying, quote, "We have not attempted to estimate the cost of acquiring this area as we are not sure that it falls within the scope of our committee's work. We suggest, however, that a spirit of constructive cooperation on the part of the state of Virginia and among some of the large landowners of this region with whom we have been in touch, promises reasonable prices and perhaps a number of donations. We suggest that if Congress thinks favorable of this proposed park site, a commission be appointed to handle the purchase and to solicit contributions and to arrange condemnation proceedings if the state of
25:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Virginia deems it wise. The creation of such a park may well be made contingent on a limited total land cost."
25:28 Holly Frey? We talked about the process of acquiring land for Mammoth Cave National Park in our episode on the Kentucky Cave Wars, which came out on August 19, 2024. The creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is also its own story. For Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive, it was a whole process. The plan was for the Commonwealth of Virginia to purchase the land and then donate that land to the federal government. Virginia didn't actually have a budget to buy that land, though. The money would, at least in theory, be coming from donations.
26:04 Tracy V. Wilson? So the land that would become Shenandoah National Park is the ancestral and traditional homeland of multiple indigenous nations and peoples. This includes speakers of at least three different language groups: Suan, Iroquois, and Algonquin. It's an incredibly diverse area, but by the time the park was being proposed, most of the region's indigenous peoples had been forced out through colonization, warfare, and removals. This process of displacement and erasure was still going on into the 20th century, including through the passage of a Racial Purity Act in Virginia in 1924 that
26:48 Tracy V. Wilson? defined indigenous people with any amount of African ancestry as, quote, "colored."
26:54 Tracy V. Wilson? We talk about this more in our two-part episode on Loving vs. Virginia, which was the 1967 Supreme Court decision that found laws banning interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. That two-parter came out on April 15th and 17th, 2013.
27:11 Holly Frey? So by the time Congress authorized the creation of Shenandoah National Park, most of the people living in these mountains and valleys were white. They were mainly subsistence farmers who lived primarily on small tracts of land that had some planted crops, some pasture for their animals, and some forest for timber and other resources. There were some people who had land they were willing to sell, but for the most part, it was land they didn't have some other kind of use for. Otherwise, this was often land that people had been living and working for generations, and they didn't want to leave it.
27:48 Tracy V. Wilson? So two overlapping interconnected projects started at this point. One was securing the land and the right-of-way that would be necessary to build that, quote, "possible skyline drive along the mountain top" that the committee had described as the possible greatest single feature of this national park. That road was intended to travel all the way from one end of the park to the other, where it would provide access to campgrounds and picnic areas and other amenities, while also functioning as a scenic road for sightseeing. The construction of this road would be paid for largely through federal funding. And then the other project was to survey
28:30 Tracy V. Wilson? and acquire all the land for the rest of the park. And that was meant to be funded by private donations.
28:39 Holly Frey? We will talk about that more after we pause for a sponsor break.
28:46 Speaker 01 In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy. At American Military University, that legacy can help open new doors through education. If someone in your family served in the military, you could be eligible for reduced tuition. Take the next step with flexible online programs built for real life. Learn more at amu.apus.edu/military.
29:10 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
29:52 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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30:58 Tracy V. Wilson? help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessi have in store this time around.
31:39 Tracy V. Wilson? They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
32:19 Tracy V. Wilson? When Congress passed legislation authorizing the establishment of Shenandoah National Park, it described a 521,000 acre park with that land purchased through donations and private funds, not from the federal budget. An organization called the Shenandoah Valley National Park Association had already been established before this to try to raise funds, and it had set an initial goal of $2.5 million.
32:59 Tracy V. Wilson? By April of 1926, it had raised more than $1.2 million in pledges, and that had been enough to be able to get that congressional authorization for the park. Once Congress had passed the legislation, Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd established the Conservation and Development Commission to survey, appraise, and actually purchase the necessary land.
33:24 Holly Frey? It became clear almost immediately that the $2.5 million fundraising goal was not going to be enough. As we said earlier, a lot of people didn't want to sell their land or they didn't want to sell it as cheaply as those initial estimates had assumed. Property values also started to increase because of the proposed park. As 521,000 acres started to seem impossible, William E. Carson, Chair of the Conservation and Development Commission, advocated for the size of the park to be reduced.
33:58 Tracy V. Wilson? This was the first in a series of size reductions for the park in progress, but it was not enough to bridge the gap between the estimates and the reality. It also didn't address the fact that the state needed to acquire land from hundreds of individual landowners, some of whom were adamantly opposed to selling. Like, sometimes appraisers showed up at somebody's home and they were greeted with a shotgun. Even in the best circumstances, this would have been immensely time and labor intensive, but the circumstances really just seemed to be getting more and more contentious.
34:38 Holly Frey? So, in 1928, Virginia passed a Blanket Condemnation Act, which allowed the state to file one condemnation notice in each of the counties where the park was going to be and then condemn all of the applicable land and purchase it by eminent domain. The thought process behind this law went back to the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, when the US used a similar tactic to compensate the Vatican for church-owned land that residents of the Philippines had settled on during and after the war. Carson's brother had served on the Supreme Court of the Philippines and was very familiar with this strategy.
35:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Of course, this blanket condemnation led to pushback and court cases, but it did allow the state to start acquiring the necessary land a little more quickly. People were paid for their land, but there were a lot of disparities in terms of how much they were paid. Like, people who could afford a lawyer, or who knew how to contact to get help, they generally did better than people who were poor, isolated, and didn't have a lot of access to education or resources. Like, if you had a personal line to your state rep who could argue with this committee on your behalf, you might get a lot more money than somebody who really didn't know where to start with all of this.
36:02 Holly Frey? But then the Great Depression started in 1929, and that meant it got a lot harder to bring in new donations to pay for the condemned land and to collect on people's earlier pledges. By 1932, the minimum acreage needed for the park had been reduced to 160,000 acres. It ultimately took 10 years and an appropriation of $1 million from the Virginia General Assembly to acquire the necessary land.
36:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Virginia had not been paying to, or had not been intending to do that, and was like, if we don't put in this $1 million, it's not gonna happen. As all of this was going on, the federal government was also building Skyline Drive as the park's access road and scenic parkway. This started with the creation of a fishing camp for President Herbert Hoover, who was the president at the time. William E. Carson had secured exclusive fishing rights on a part of the Rapid安River and convinced the president to establish his fishing camp there. The presidential fishing camp required a road, and this area was also in the middle
37:12 Tracy V. Wilson? of an intense drought, so this road building became a federal drought relief project. The Federal Drought Relief Administration paid for out-of-work farmers and fruit pickers to build the road, and then the road became part of Skyline Drive, and the president's fishing camp became part of Shenandoah National Park. This first phase of work initially connected the fishing camp to Big Meadows, Skyline, and Thornton Gap.
37:41 Holly Frey? The idea behind Skyline Drive was that the road would be easy to drive on with gentle spiral curves and a speed limit of 35 miles an hour in most places. Engineers and landscape architects used techniques that had been refined on roads and parkways in the parks in the west. It was built in segments of about 10 to 12 miles, with each segment being built with a different crew, most of them locally hired. Much of the manual labor was paid for by relief programs, first drought relief and then relief from the Great Depression. These segments had their differences based on the needs of the land along each stretch, but there was also a sense of unity stemming from the landscape architects' initial work
38:26 Holly Frey? to plan a road that would simultaneously have the best views and the least impact on the landscape.
38:32 Tracy V. Wilson? So, the road was built along a mountainside, or carved out from the mountain, with soil that was then used to fill in other areas for the road. Blasting was limited and tightly controlled to minimize any scarring or destruction of the landscape, and large trees were protected as much as possible. Retaining walls, tunnels, and bridges were built from local stone, and originally there were also guardrails made from local chestnut logs.
39:02 Holly Frey? By the time this road building got underway, it had been seven years since the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee had made its recommendation for the establishment of Shenandoah National Park. While there was plenty of controversy around the park and the fundraising and the land acquisition, people were also incredibly impatient for it to be open. An unpaved portion of the road from Camp Rapidan was open to the public temporarily in the fall of 1932, and while drivers did seem to enjoy the view, the temporary opening made it clear how much work there really was left to do. Not only did the road need to be paved, but there needed to be overlooks, guardrails,
39:45 Holly Frey? and other features and amenities added before it could be really suitable as the scenic drive that it was intended to be.
39:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Herbert Hoover lost the 1932 presidential election and his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps not long after taking office in 1933. This was part of the New Deal, the set of projects and programs to try to help the United States get through the Great Depression. The CCC was created through the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which was legislation passed by Congress, as well as Executive Order 6101, Relief of Unemployment Through the Performance of Useful Public Work. The Civilian Conservation Corps provided jobs for unemployed unmarried young men,
40:35 Tracy V. Wilson? and a lot of that work was related to parks and natural resources. The CCC was racially segregated, and while there were CCC camps for black workers elsewhere in Virginia, the ones at Shenandoah were all white, and most of the people working in them were from small towns in Virginia.
40:53 Holly Frey? Ultimately, there were 12 CCC camps connected to Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive. CCC workers built hiking trails and fire trails, picnic areas, campgrounds, and other amenities in the park. They also planted native trees and shrubs and built overlooks and guardrails along Skyline Drive. They graded the land around the road, helping it to blend in naturally with the landscape, and they helped restore land that had been overfarmed, again focusing on native plants and trees. In some areas, they cut down trees and other vegetation to improve the view from the road and from overlooks, but in others, they replanted areas that had been clear-cut or otherwise depleted.
41:38 Holly Frey? There was a focus on restoration of the native ecosystem, but also about creating and maintaining a view that looked natural. Maybe not wild and untouched in the way the national parks in the West had been constructed, but scenic and rustic. Over the course of the Great Depression, about 4,000 people found work in Shenandoah National Park and on Skyline Drive.
42:02 Tracy V. Wilson? The first finished section of Skyline Drive opened to the public in 1934. This was the central part of the parkway. The northern section opened in 1936 and the southern part in 1939, which was after the park had opened.
42:19 Holly Frey? President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally dedicated Shenandoah National Park on July 3rd, 1936, at Big Meadows, which is one of the park's recreation areas. In his address, he said, quote, "The creation of this park is one part of our great program of husbandry, the joint husbandry of our human resources and our natural resources." He spoke about the young men who had found work in building the park and how the park was a work of natural conservation that would give vacationers a respite that was good for their souls. He concluded, quote, "We seek to pass on to our children a richer land, a stronger nation. I therefore dedicate Shenandoah National Park to this and succeeding generations of
43:04 Holly Frey? Americans for the recreation and for the recreation which we shall find here."
43:10 Tracy V. Wilson? We are batting a thousand on the opposite person reading the thing that made us cry in research.
43:16 Holly Frey? Hooray! I mean, that was a close call for me, but I made it.
43:21 Tracy V. Wilson? So the park's struggles had not ended with the acquisition of the necessary land. Like, this address made it sound really lovely, but there had still been a lot of strife. In February of 1934, National Park Director Arno B. Camerer had announced that anybody living in the park would have to leave before the park could open. From the federal government's point of view, this had always been the expectation. Like, that was how it was supposed to work, but that had not always been communicated very clearly, including to people who were tenants on land that was being sold to make the park. They were now being considered squatters.
44:05 Holly Frey? A resettlement project called the Shenandoah Homesteads Project had been established in 1934 and then was taken over by the Resettlement Administration, which was a New Deal anti-poverty program. This program was incredibly controversial, including among some people who had been supporters of the park since the beginning. For example, Harry F. Byrd, who had served as Virginia's governor until 1930 and then had been elected as a US Senator, found it paternalistic and wasteful.
44:37 Tracy V. Wilson? The goal of this program was to resettle people out of the park and into newly established communities. People who earned a living by farming were to be moved to similar homesteads, and others were expected to find work in other industries. But some of the people who were displaced by the creation of the park had been getting at least part of their income from gathering and selling chestnuts. The chestnut blight that was introduced to the United States from Asia reached this part of Virginia as the park was being built. That dramatically affected the landscape of the park, and it also destroyed chestnuts as a source of income.
45:22 Tracy V. Wilson? So that meant that some of the people who were being resettled were not only being displaced, but they also had to figure out an entirely new way of life.
45:31 Holly Frey? Roughly 2,000 people from 465 families were forcibly relocated for the creation of Shenandoah National Park. And most of them did not make it on the homesteads where they had been resettled, and they were ultimately displaced again. There were a lot of reasons for this, including that many of them went from living on land that their family had owned outright for generations to land where they had to pay rent or a mortgage. There were also people who tried to return to their cabins after being forced out of them, and others who tried to take shelter in them due to the financial strains of the Great Depression. The National Park Service eventually destroyed many of these cabins to try to stop people from squatting in them.
46:16 Holly Frey? A very small number of elderly people were allowed to remain in their homes within the park until the end of their lives, or until they needed to move somewhere that they could have more support.
46:27 Tracy V. Wilson? None of this was really known to park visitors unless they were maybe locals. And after Shenandoah National Park officially opened in 1936, it quickly became one of the most visited national parks. It was the first national park to get a million visitors in a year. Skyline Drive had also been instantly popular after its first section opened in 1934.
46:54 Holly Frey? And of course, there were black visitors to the park and black motorists on Skyline Drive right from the beginning. Perhaps surprisingly, considering that this was a southern state in the 1930s, this doesn't seem like something that park planners or the federal government had really thought much about before the park opened.
47:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, if they thought about it, they didn't like, take action to make any kind of official policy. And by 1938, there were about 10,000 black visitors to Shenandoah National Park every year. And there were also ongoing issues with black visitors being given contradictory messages from park staff about where they were allowed to be, what facilities they were allowed to use, as well as being hassled by white staff and visitors. So the National Park Service eventually established segregated accommodations in the park at Lewis Mountain, including a coffee shop, picnic area, campground, and cottages.
47:55 Tracy V. Wilson? These accommodations opened in 1939, and soon they became so popular that white visitors were asking to be admitted to them as well. Apparently, this had some of the best food in the park, and there was also a musical performance series that was very popular. The Pinnacles Picnic Ground was also established specifically to be an integrated facility.
48:18 Tracy V. Wilson? There was no formal segregation policy for the rest of the park, but it was just broadly treated as whites only until the park started desegregating in the late 1940s. It finished that process in 1950. Although, to be clear, there are still criticisms today about park visitors and staff and the National Park Service more broadly being disproportionately white.
48:46 Holly Frey? Today, Skyline Drive runs for 105.5 miles and it's the only public road in Shenandoah National Park. In 1996, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Shenandoah National Park encompasses nearly 200,000 acres of land today, with nearly 80,000 acres designated as wilderness. There are also more than 500 miles of hiking trails, including 101 miles of the Appalachian Trail, which runs parallel to Skyline Drive. There is an entry fee of $15 per person entering on foot, or $30 for private vehicles entering on Skyline Drive. Motorcycles are $25.
49:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Shenandoah National Park, which, I haven't said this earlier because it's going to be in the behind the scenes, but just in case people are wondering, it is an indigenous word, but we're not actually sure from which language or what specifically it meant. But Shenandoah National Park is also connected to Great Smoky Mountains National Park via the Blue Ridge Parkway, and that's what we're going to talk about next time. Do you have listener mail? I do, I have listener mail. So this listener mail is from Kiran. They titled this email, "Roman Baths and Butts." The email says, "Hello, Tracy and Holly. I hope this email finds you as well as can possibly be.
50:14 Tracy V. Wilson? I just wanted to write a quick note that I hope might bring you a little bit of a laugh. Like most people, I've been having a chaotic year and fell behind on my listening, but just caught up and had to laugh at the timing of the Roman bathing traditions mentioned in the Unearthed episodes. Tasting History with Max Miller also just did a recent episode on Roman banquets. This time, specifically roasted flamingo and quoted a few wonderfully spicy quips from the poet Marshall." Infamous for his copious writings about whether or not he was invited to someone's dinner and his perceived quality of their company, Marshall wrote to slash of one acquaintance,
50:54 Tracy V. Wilson? quote, "You don't invite anyone to dinner, Kada, except your bathing companions. The baths alone supply you with guests. I've been wondering why you never invite me, Kada, but now I understand. You don't like the sight of my bare butt." Clearly, modern humans are not the only ones to perhaps have some misgivings about bathing and dining with all your work colleagues and acquaintances, lol. I have not yet read Marshall's copious epigrams, but this episode made me want to put them on my reading list. Anyway, thank you two so much for all that you do. I cannot express in words how much I appreciate you both. I want to add my name to the list of people thanking you,
51:37 Tracy V. Wilson? particularly for the unearthed episodes and especially their introduction. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know this year has been a doozy thus far, to say the least, so I hope that people in your life bake you cupcakes or something else nice soon as a treat for all of your hard work. You deserve all the special treats. Thanks again and all the best. Kiran, thank you so much for this email. Kiran, this was a delight.
52:06 Holly Frey? But.
52:08 Tracy V. Wilson? I don't really have anything else to add. I just love that. And I hope that Marshall is how Marshall's name was pronounced as an ancient Roman person. I did not go look it up, if it's some other pronunciation that pronounces letters differently. Sorry.
52:24 Holly Frey? Now I want Tina Belcher to become obsessed with Roman butts because she knows she has a butt fetish.
52:32 Tracy V. Wilson? If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcast or history podcasts at iHeartRadio.com, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
52:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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54:02 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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