Photo Courtesy of Virginia Tourism Corporation/Photo by Scott K. Brown
Fall is an active time in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Migratory birds, like hawks and warblers, pass through searching for fruits, seeds and other food. Monarch butterflies move southward. Fall fungi, like scarlet, gold-orange and purple gilled mushrooms, punctuate the forest floor. Tan puffballs bring out the kid in grownups — when popped, they shoot up a tiny dust cloud of spores.
And, of course, there is the park’s famous autumn artistry of colorful leaves,
Shenandoah’s vast forest covers 95 percent of the national park with 331 tree, shrub and vine species. Chestnut and red oaks dominate the ridge tops and upper slopes. Maples, birch, ash and basswood cover the middle slopes. Along streams and on the lower slopes are yellow poplar woodlands.
When visitors turn into the park, the temperature seems to drop. “You gain 10 to 15 degrees in comfort,” said longtime visitor Patty Kelly, who for 40 years has escaped suburbia to the park several times a year with her husband, John. “SNP has a certain serenity,” she said. “Sometimes, the phone doesn’t work here and that’s good. It’s a world away.”
Alexandrians Clyde and Samantha Wentling got engaged and married in the park. “We like the fresh air and open spaces,” Samantha said.
President Herbert Hoover chose the area for his escape from Washington. Before his 1929 swearing in, Hoover instructed scouts to find a place with excellent fishing at least 2,500 feet or higher in elevation and within 100 miles of Washington, D.C. They found it at the merger of two streams in today’s Shenandoah National Park, and Hoover directed the Marines to build a rustic, 13-building complex amid the rocky terrain of hemlocks, pines, oaks and mountain laurels, where bears, bobcats and foxes roamed.
Visitors today can explore three remaining cabins connected by woodsy paths and stone bridges. The Hoovers’ pine cabin is restored to its 1929 appearance.
Within earshot of a babbling stream, Hoover wrote that his camp could “reduce our egotism, soothe our troubles and shame our wickedness.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the park’s dedication, said, “ . . . with the smell of the woods, and the wind in the trees, they will forget the rush and strain of all the other long weeks of the year, and for a short time at least, the days will be good for their hearts and for their souls.”
Shenandoah National Park is a place to shame your wickedness and soothe your soul.
Big and Diverse
Photo Courtesy of Virginia Tourism Corporation/Photo by Scott K. Brown
Nature is front and center in Shenandoah National Park. The park’s 197,438 acres sprawl across eight counties atop the Blue Ridge Mountains, bifurcated on the mountains’ spine by Skyline Drive, with 75 overlooks for 105 miles. This roadway joins the Blue Ridge Parkway, which goes another 469 miles to Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains.
Congress created the park in 1935 to provide a traditional Western national park experience in the East. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated it in 1936. The Civilian Conservation Corps built recreational facilities, guard walls and trails during the Depression.
More than 1 million people visit every year and explore the park’s 60-plus peaks with elevation higher than 3,000 feet and 90 streams and waterfalls spilling down the mountainsides. The highest waterfall is Overall Run at 93 feet.
Visitors might see deer, bobcats, raccoons, foxes or wild turkeys, in addition to bears. One of the park’s treasures is the hard-to-see, endangered Shenandoah salamander which has only been observed on three mountain tops in the park and nowhere else in the world.
The mountain range’s craggy peaks and imposing rock formations are made of granite, sandstone, quartzite, phyllite, basalt and grandiorite.
Hikers can tackle 500 miles of easy-to-strenuous trails, including the Maine-to-Georgia Appalachian Trail, a 2,176-mile ribbon stretching through 14 states. Ambitious visitors can scale two peaks, Hawks Bill and Stony Man, which soar above 4,000 feet. Old Rag, 3,291 feet, is the most popular and most treacherous hike.
The 130-acre, treeless Big Meadows is a unique, high elevation wetland habitat with vernal pools and, at times, an explosion of small critters. One ranger called it a “supermarket for insect-eating birds.” Although It’s less than .001 percent of the park, it supports 16 percent of the park’s rare plant species and two animal species rare in Virginia. As the largest open area in the park, it offers great raptor viewing. Acres of leathery grape ferns and wildflowers attract butterflies and other insects.
Keen observers might spot peregrine falcons departing for points south in the fall. Since 2000, biologists at the park have raised young peregrine falcons and released them in hopes that they imprint on the area and return to breed. The goal is to restore state-threatened peregrines to Virginia’s mountains.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are known for an ever-present bluish-gray haze, hence the chain’s name. Unfortunately, 80 percent of the haze is actually pollution.
Seeing Bears Between the Leaves
“Bears are very smart,” according to Ranger Woody Searles, who says there are 500 to 800 black bears in the park. “Bears want easy food and a lot of it.”
In the fall, food’s aplenty, as trees drop acorns and as blackberries, raspberries and pokeberries ripen. Bears are omnivores, weighing 250 to 300 pounds, and can put on three pounds a day in the fall, said Ranger Mara Meisel.
“Look up, especially in the trees,” Searles said. “When bears hear cars, they climb up trees.” A sure sign of a bear is a “bear jam” — multiple cars stopped along the road with gawkers snapping photos.
Keep 150 feet or four bus lengths between you and the bear.
Bears can run 30 miles per hour, so distance is your safest bet. If you come upon a bear, turn around. Running can trigger their chase response.
No one has ever been attacked by a bear in Shenandoah National Park, the rangers said.
