Miriam M. Sizer was an educator hired to study the mountain residents in Nicholson, Weakley, Corbin, and Richards Hollows, to make recommendations as to solutions to the problems inherent in relocation. Her beliefs and bias, supported by George Freeman Pollock and William E. Carson, have influenced popular thought for three generations.
Earthenware jugs and stills were used in the past as "humorous" display objects to ridicule the "moonshining mountain folk", but in reality they represent the final chapters in a centuries-old American agricultural tradition.
While emphasizing the complexity of pre-park life, the recent archaeological research has clearly contributed to overturning the negative history of the region and helped to return it to the control of the displaced and their descendants. The challenge now is to continually strive for accuracy in our understanding and presentation of the park's complex historic past while remaining ever aware of the impact of the past upon the present.
There were many people who played a role in the foundation of Shenandoah National Park. Learn about how these people, who together represented public committees, private interests, local government all the way up to the Department of the Interior, brought the idea of an eastern national park into reality, and the events along the way that shaped a section of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah National Park we know today.
Located on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge, in the shadow of Old Rag Mountain in Madison County, Virginia, the three hollows were home to approximately 460 persons when Shenandoah National Park was created in the 1930s, having been continuously occupied by settlers of European descent since the late eighteenth century.
