"Answer at Once"
Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park,
1934-1938 |
| |
| Edited by Katrina M. Powell |
| 192 pages, 6 x 9 |
| 12 b&w illustrations, 1 map |
| Cloth ISBN 978-0-8139-2853-1 • $35.00 |
| December 2009 |
 |
With the Commonwealth of Virginia's Public Park Condemnation Act
of 1928, the state surveyed for and acquired three thousand tracts
of land that would become Shenandoah National Park. The Commonwealth
condemned the homes of five hundred families so that their land
could be "donated" to the federal government and placed
under the auspices of the National Park Service. Prompted by the
condemnation of their land, the residents began writing letters
to National Park and other government officials to negotiate their
rights and to request various services, property, and harvests.
Typically represented in the popular media as lawless, illiterate,
and incompetent, these mountaineers prove themselves otherwise
in this poignant collection of letters. The history told by the
residents themselves both adds to and counters the story that
is generally accepted about them.
These letters are housed in the Shenandoah National Park archives
in Luray, Virginia, which was opened briefly to the public from
2000 to 2002, but then closed due to lack of funding. This selection
of roughly 150 of these letters, in their entirety, makes these
documents available again not only to the public but also to scholars,
researchers, and others interested in the region's history, in
the politics of the park, and in the genealogy of the families.
Supplementing the letters are introductory text, photographs,
annotation, and oral histories that further document the lives
of these individuals.
Katrina M. Powell is Associate Professor of English
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the author
of The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics
of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National
Park
(Virginia).
