VIR G I N I A
Shenandoah National Park
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Just 75 miles — yet worlds away — from Washington, D.C., Shenandoah National Park is a natural playground of plummeting waterfalls, wildflower-stippled meadows, magnificent panoramas and peaceful woodlands echoing with songbirds. The Blue Ridge Mountains have been occupied by humans for at least 9,000 years, including by the native peoples, who hunted and gathered game, fruit, nuts and berries. Some eventually constructed villages at low elevations in the surrounding Piedmont and Shenandoah Valleys. By the 1750s, early European settlers moved into the foothills, seeking land to farm, raise livestock and develop orchards. Later, land was purchased to
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UNITED VAN LINES NATIONAL PARKS GUIDE
extract resources, such as water, copper and lumber. Resorts were soon built, attracting city dwellers. Eventually, the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads and trails, re-establishing and helping to preserve the wilderness we know today. Rising above the Virginia Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley, the national park boasts a range of elevations, rocks and slopes — as well as variable precipitation and latitude — resulting in a diversity of habitats for tens of thousands of living creatures, plants, fungi and lichens.
or disappeared. Fortunately, over the last century, many of these species returned through natural population recovery or due to re-introduction on Virginian land outside of the park. Today, Shenandoah is a haven for 190 resident and migratory bird species, 50-plus species of mammal, over 20 reptile and amphibian species, over 40 fish species, and an untold number of spiders, insects and other invertebrates. From black bears and bobcats hidden deep within forests to rarely seen spotted skunks, shrews, moles and voles; wild turkeys, red-tailed hawks and Carolina chickadees; and reptiles like box turtles and timber
T HE F LO RA A N D FAU N A As land was cleared and hunting
rattlesnakes, life unfolds at every turn. The park’s Mid-Atlantic location
occurred, animal populations in the
rests between the Northern and
area decreased, drastically declined
Southern Appalachian Mountains,
SOUTHEAST