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coats. B’ar hide brought $25 to $100 15 y’ars ago.”
Mr. Lambert’s friend told of other creatures that had disappeared from the park: Jack rabbits “twice as big as cottontails” that hid in the mountain laurel. “They’re darker color than cottontail, ears six inches long, twice as long as other rabbits, tail nearly black.”
He told of a “link cat” caught by Charlie Whitehead on Jeremy’s Run while ’coon hunting. “Dogs treed it — awful big feller. Charlie didn’t know what it was, shipped it to New York and got good money for it.”
Mr. Sisk also recalled wild turkeys being shot and sold at “high prices” to “city folks.”
Restoring the mountain’s wild plants provoked no opposition; the same was not true of the wild animals, however.
Lowlanders today still accuse the Park Service of sneaking deer in secretly, complaining that big mule deer were brought in from the Midwest and mixed with local white tails to produce a crossbreed particularly destructive to farms and orchards.
The park never formally developed a comprehensive plan for restoring wildlife, according to Mr. Lambert’s administrative history. But repopulation did occur.
James Lassiter, Shenandoah’s first superintendent, wrote in May 1934 of releasing 13 deer at Big Run, one of the park’s “wildest and most isolated sections.”
Though donated from Mt. Vernon, the animals had come initially from Grand Isle, Mich., according to a park assistant naturalist, and might have been a different subspecies from the native Virginia deer.
Bear also were released — not just any old bears, but Bill and Betsy, brother and sister from the Allegheny Mountains. The duo had been part of a roadside exhibit at Panorama until protests over their treatment led to freedom for Betsy
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