Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Date of Graduation

5-10-2024

Publish

yes

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

History

Advisor(s)

Margaret Mulrooney

Neel Amin

Kristie Kendall

Abstract

Shenandoah National Park (SNP), established in 1935, was the first major case of the United States seizing privately owned land for the creation of a national park. As a result, approximately 500 families that resided in the area of the Blue Ridge Mountains that was to become SNP were removed from their homes on the mountain throughout the 1930s. This experience of removal greatly impacted not only the displaced themselves, but it has had a lasting impact on their 21st-century descendants. The collective memory of the displaced and their descendants is made up of varying themes that can be used to understand the personal and community impacts of the removals. Modern community efforts to understand and remember the history of SNP and the displacements have caused a generational shift within the collective memory of the displaced, with many of the 21st-century descendants of the displaced sharing an eagerness to discuss their ties to the park and their family’s past. The impact of these efforts to understand and remember, as they are described in this thesis, can be used as a framework for addressing other cases of mass removal.

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