Shenandoah, Virginia

Skyline Drive, which runs for 105 miles (169 kilometers) along the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains, is flanked by a rumpled panorama of forests and mountains. To many who travel the drive, the highway itself is a park, complete with numerous deer sightings along the way. But the cars are passing the real Shenandoah. More than 500 miles (805 kilometers) of trails can be reached from Skyline Drive, and the Appalachian Trail roughly parallels it for nearly its entire length.

The long, narrow park flows outward, upward, and downward from the highway that splits it. The drive, following ridge trails walked by Indians and early settlers, transports visitors to a park built on a frontier that lingered into modern times.

Unlike most national parks, Shenandoah is a place where settlers lived for over a century. To create the park, Virginia state officials acquired 1,088 privately owned tracts and donated the land to the nation. Never before had a large, populated expanse of private land been converted into a national park. And never before had planners made a park of land so used by humans. Before the park opened and during its early days, some 465 families moved or were moved from their cabins and resettled outside the proposed park boundaries. A few mountaineers, though, lived out their lives in the park and were buried in the secluded graveyards of Shenandoah's vanished settlements.