Prologue

Deep in the dark and mysterious hollows of what is now the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, what is now grown over by briars and recently emerged forest, one can find the remains of communities, foundations of schools, and homes once occupied by families descended from some of the earliest settlers of the area. Names like Menefee, Atkins, Pullen, and countless others that remain here in this area of the eastern Appalachians; their old homesteads now empty, in ruin, and the last physical reminder that people once lived here. Where once the hoe and plough turned over the thin poor earth, and orchards once stood, rarely a person now treads. Tourists drive Rt 211 on their way to the Skyline Drive at Thornton Gap without notice of the old farm lanes that lead into the hollow that cradles the Thornton River in its close held arms.

Sometime in the late 1990’s while home from college in the northeast, I borrowed my father’s truck and drove to the bend, once known as the “turn bridge” on Rt 211 where the south-fork of the Thornton River passes under the road with the intention of following the river to its head. I had never been this way. The trail to Oventop Mountain starts here and begins its steep climb to the peak; however here I would follow the river as it zig-zagged back and forth along the stony floor of the hollow.

It was on this trip that I came across the remains of an old farmstead buried in the undergrowth. I knew that people once lived here in the national park, and I was only perhipherally aware that people were forced from their homes (intentionally burned and destroyed so that there was nothing to come back to) in order for it to be formed; but, here along the sullen tumbling brook was the tangible evidence. Who lived here? When did they leave? How many generations lived in this land? What was their life like? Where did they go after this was no longer a place they could call home?

The focus on this project is not to vilify the creation of the park, it is essential to the economy of the area; however, to share images of what once was, and to connect these places to the people who are descendants of these hollows. This is a long-term work. It is only with the assistance of the wonderful folks on the Rappahannock County Memorial group on Facebook that I have the resources to connect family names to locations.

This project is dedicated to the families who called these mountains home, and to their descendants.