Description
Shenandoah Secrets: The Story of the Park's Hidden Past (Revised 2011 )
The authors point out significant and interesting events that transpired within what is now the boundaries of the Shenandoah National Park before it was a park. What secrets lie hidden in the Park's forests and briery tangles? What fascinating all-but-forgotten incidents took place inside its boundaries?
Today, Shenandoah National Park is, in the words of an old mountain woman, "a play place for city folk." But that was not always the case. Before it was a Park, it was home to nearly 500 families in more than 300 square miles of Virginia countryside — a microcosm of an earlier America. Industry, agriculture, commerce, war with its military actions, political decisions, community, church, and family life—all these have left their mark here. As time passes, these marks grow fainter. The Reeders have kept their memories alive through the words of this book.
The authors have collected and published many photographs gleaned from the files of history, some of which were published for the first time. They are candid in their realism and their articulation of life as it was in the past, before the arrival of the artificial "wilderness" created by the formation of the Park. It is many of these same photos that have caused the Park's cultural resource mavens to ban Secrets from being sold in the Park because they depict a period in American history when poverty was prevalent, not only within the confines of current Park boundaries, but in much of rural and urban American. The Depression affected millions of people everywhere, not just in SNP. Within the mountain culture, no one was ashamed to be poor because people cared for each other. No one went hungry.
The book's rare and unusual photos depict some of the only interior shots of mountain homes, as well as cabins, schools, mills and other industry, recreation, farm life, animals, and the admirable Appalachian ethics and way of life. Complementing the photos are anecdotes straight from the former inhabitants (some quite humorous), as well as carefully researched events going back to before the founding of the nation. Where possible, these events are tied to the sites where they occurred within the Park, along the roads, the trails, and through the gaps.
