In 1716, Gov. Alexander Spotswood, also seeking westward expansion for Virginia, led 50 men on horseback through Swift Run Gap and down the western slope to see the Shenandoah Valley, where they camped by the river they called “Euphrates.” After their return home Spotswood proclaimed them “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,” and presented each a tiny gold horseshoe.
Shortly afterward, English, German, and Scotch-Irish pioneers began to settle in the valleys. They gradually moved up into the coves and hollows of the Blue Ridge. By 1760, roads were being built, and grist mills, sawmills, cider presses, and tanneries were common sights. The first toll turnpike, in 1785, crossed the mountains at Thornton Gap (Panorama). It was named for Francis Thornton, who settled there in 1733. Other important roads crossed at Swift Run and Browns Gap, in the southern section of the park.
In the early years, the settlers of the Blue Ridge coves and hollows wrested a comfortable living from their farms and domestic industries. They sold lumber products and tanbark to the lowland settlers for cash and thus could buy things they could not produce.
For some 20 years before the Civil War, there was iron and copper mining in the Blue Ridge. The mountain people were not much affected by this short-lived industry and by the time the war came, the ores had been worked out. You can see remnants of the old copper mines on the Stony Man Nature Trail.
During the Civil War, both the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley became battlegrounds; Browns Gap was used by Jackson as an important thoroughfare in the Campaign of 1862, and Signal Knob became a major communications point. You can see Signal Knob from the Shenandoah Valley Overlook.
When the railroad came to the Shenandoah Valley, heavy machinery and larger, more efficient industry came with it. Many mills and tanyards that served small communities through the skill and energy of one man or family became quiet, then decayed into the landscape. Demand for the mountaineers’ crafts decreased. They had little cash income left except from moonshining and chestnuts. By 1915, the fungus chestnut blight had destroyed most of the chestnut trees.
Isolated from the rapidly changing lowlands, and with their forest and soil resources depleted, the mountain people were reduced to subsistence farming.
As the years passed, the population of the mountains east of the Shenandoah dwindled. However, there were still over 2,000 people living on the lands which were acquired by the State of Virginia for Shenandoah National Park. Before the land was deeded to the Federal Government, these people, more than 400 families, moved to new homes. The self-sufficient families moved without assistance. The very old and the disabled were helped by the State Welfare Department. About 300 families were moved into homesteads by the U. S. Resettlement Administration. Here each family had the use of a house and small farm with the privilege of long-term purchase.
A PARK EMERGES
The first official act in forming the park was the appointment of the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee. The Secretary of the Interior appointed the committee to survey the Blue Ridge and other eastern regions as sites for future National Parks. After hearing the report, local groups were formed to promote the project.