Moon over progress
March 3, 2009 by crystalabbegraham
Story by Chris Graham
Heard the stories about how travelers along the Skyline Drive and U.S. 33 who get turned around end up needing State Police escorts to get away from not-exactly-helpful mountainfolk? The grudges that lead to the disputin’ are 75 years in the making, dating back to the last great economic calamity to befall America.
“There are people today who are still very angry – the descendants of the people who were displaced, they’re still angry about their land being taken,” said Duane Hahn, the author of Shenandoah Moon, a work of historical fiction that examines the displacement of Blue Ridge Mountains families in the 1930s to make way for the development of the Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive.
It’s a story that is not often told in the Valley and Central Virginia anymore, though the facts surrounding what happened sound somewhat familiar today. It was the Great Depression, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was pushing internal improvements, what we might call today stimulus, as a way to boost the economy short term. Virginia lawmakers had been talking about creating a state park in the Blue Ridge dating back to the Roaring ’20s, and set into motion the forced evictions of mountain families to clear the way for the development of what became the Shenandoah National Park in the mid-’30s.
Hahn spins a story about the impact of the policy initiatives in Shenandoah Moon, which will also appear on the stage this year as a production of the Waynesboro Players.
“I think it’s an awareness thing, an awareness of your own history that you didn’t know about,” said Hahn, a Valley native and retired high-school teacher.
“And then the whole thing about progress is there. Is it good? Was it good to relocate all of those people, some who did not want to go? And some who weren’t sure? Was that good? Was that even progress? The questions still resonate,” Hahn said.
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