The Page County Watch BLOG

This page is going to start a series of articles about the history and culture of  Page County, Virginia.

Click here to read Part 1. Life in the Mountains

It’s going to start right around the time of the first Depression, 1929.

This is appropriate, because we are headed into the second Great Depression now, so it will be good to get an idea what to be prepared for.    You see, in the first Great Depression, the people of Page County almost didn’ t notice it.  They lived to a great extent off the land, and didn’t need all that much money for basic survival.    But with the changes in agriculture, it’s real hard to find a free range chicken, a non-hormoned cow, or an organic vegetable garden any more.    And medicinal herbs?  We have Apple Cottage, but we aren’t growing the supply that Apple Cottage is selling, so we sure better be collecting some seeds and getting ready for that, too.

This county has many chicken farms that are one phone call away from being told that Pilgrims Pride doesn’t need them any more.

So it would be appropriate, while we still have chicken being picked up from Page County, packaged in plastic wrappers in  Texas,  and shipped back here to WalMart by truck, that we begin a very serious review and dialogue of the history of what Page County, Virginia has been, what it is now, and what it hopes to be in twenty years.

You won’t find this information in the county’s comprehensive plan.  I guess the $43,000 that paid for 3 weeks of a consultant wasn’t enough money to do the research.

You see, at the start of the Great Depression of 1929, about 3,000 people lived in the area which is currently Shenandoah National Park.  Their names are on file at the Page County Virginia library.   I’m looking at a copy of the 1930 Page County residence list.  I see names like Cave, Sours, Cubbage, and Strickler.  I see Presgraves and Taylor.    I see a statistically significant correlation between the names in the 2008 Page County phone book, and the 1930 residence list.  Not everyone lived in the Parkland, but everyone who was here at the time saw something that impacted them deeply.

With so many old names still in the phone book, it appears that families in a large measure are not choosing to move away.

I worry that the significance of this history, and this choice to stay in the area, is not understood by the current residents.    A people has a culture.   In America as a whole, that culture is more transient and includes more diversity than the culture which has remained in this “remote mountain area”.    By being more significantly composed of families with generations of history in one spot than the rest of America is, and being less transient and diverse, a few very important “Truths” start to be accepted by the population in general.  It impacts the behavior of everyone, including employees, employers, youth, and government officials.

Well, I should say it’s a remote area until the day Route 340 gets widened, but that is going to be addressed on another day, as soon as VDOT answers my FOIA request.

But back to the point.  The history of Page County dramatically impacted the current cultural belief systems of Page County.   So if we are going to understand what we see happening here, with the landfill, and the empty schools, and the Emerald City, and the double-priced phone system, and the DOD, Incorporated Business Park, and yes, even the cockfighting “ring”, we need to start by learning about what happened back in the 1920’s, when local families walked 4 miles up a mountain to do the laundry for rich people who were frolicking  in costume parties at Skyland, while simultaneously hobnobbing among themselves about how great it would be to condemn the land of the mountain people so they could take it for themselves to make some nice fishing retreats.

Right, right, I know they didn’t say it that way at the time.   That just happens to be how it turned out.

But the thing about snow is, you generally don’t get any if there weren’t any snow clouds in place for a while first.

So I .. . .Alice . . . am telling you I see some snow clouds.   And I’m planning to slowly and carefully start back in 1929 and go through the history piece by piece, to see if maybe when I’m done, you’ll see them, too.

I’ll be posting this series piece by piece, as I research it. Check back here now and again to see if there’s a new installment.

And if you have anything to add, or leads on where to look, push the Comments button.