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Rappahannock people had struggled through the chestnut blight, the almost complete loss of several apple crops from frost, and the gradual stripping of the mountains whose woods provided the major income for many families. The brutal drought of 1930 and the national depression were two more blows to an already battered rural population. This was the
case in Rappahannock, throughout the central piedmont and the mountainous counties near the Kentucky and West Virginia borders. It wasn’t that the depression had hit them so hard: rather many had been poor for so long that any relief measure was a giant opportunity. They were fed and clothed, they received medical care, they were trained in a skill and their families received a sum each month modest by urban standards but enormous in many cases to the thrifty mountain people. Another New Deal program, the resettlement administration, left lasting scars among innocent people but further stimulated the economy with its bureaucracy and building programs.
The men at Beech Spring didn’t work on the Skyline Drive, Dodson remembers. Their efforts built a road across the Hazel, roads and trails, in the Mack Hollow, -Jenkins Hollow and Piney Hill. I’p at Big Meadows there was a larger camp, Number 21. with corpsmen from Virginia cities and sometimes, from other states. In all, there were five camps in the park. When their work was completed, a $5 million state park system had been constructed, with a cost to the state of onlv $100,000.
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