The "Real World"?

Many of you have probably not heard the real story of the Shenandoah National Park. Many of you may not even heard of the Shenandoah National Park. The Shenandoah National Park is a national park that is in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. But it's more than just a national park, it’s a home that has been taken away.

There were people living in the Shenandoah Valley until the Government decided to make a park. They forced people out of their homes so they could make the park. Some people committed suicide rather than leave their home. There is a story that we heard in the book Grandpa’s Mountain by Carolyn Reeder which we later found out was true that people found one man hanging from a rope that was hanging from his barn's rafters.

The Government wasn’t the only group of people that was involved. There were the Civilian Conservation Corps (also known as CCC). This was a large group of men who were looking for jobs. Keep in mind that this was during the Great Depression when hardly anyone had jobs or money. The CCC boys were the ones who burned the houses and evict people. There is a newspaper article that says the CCC boys wrapped a 5 month pregnant mother in a rug and carried her out of the house. We found this story in a newspaper article on the web. The URL is http://www.landrights.org/OCS/shenandoah.WashPost.htm.

Displacement is a sad thing and there are movies about it. "The Iris Still Blooms" is a WVPT movie about the displacement of people in the Shenandoah Valley. It interviews people whose ancestors, and maybe even themselves, had been displaced. It also interviews a professor, Dr. Charles Perdue and his wife Nancy Martin-Perdue, who work at the University of Virginia. They have studied the displacement of people in the Shenandoah National Park for about 25 years. People in the movie wanted to be interviewed because they wanted people to know what it felt like to be displaced.

The story is a sad one, and many people have been affected by it . When we say affected by it we mean they were shocked and sadened of having to leave their houses, mountain, and memories.

These people will never forget the sadness of moving. People probably will never forgive the Government for what it did to them. Now you know the real story.

Our ThinkQuest Experience