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By FRANCES BISHOPP and JOHN BRETSCHNEIDER
Rappahannock News Staff Writers
If it’s the view you are looking for when you take the long, winding road to the higher overlooks on Skyline Drive, you may have to look elsewhere.
You can find a lot of things up on Skyline Drive these days, however most often and most days, the view is no longer one of them.
Instead what you find is a thick, dirty haze that smothers the mountains and valleys like a blanket. The visibility is so poor, the only thing
£an really distinguish clearly are the bushes on the steep incline in front of you.
In 1938, when the Skyline Drive opened, visitors could see mountain ridges 80 miles away. On a clear day, someone atop Mary’s Rock, near Thornton Gap, could look 70 miles east and see the tip of the Washington Monument.
Since that time summertime visibility has dropped 80 percent and year-round visibility has dropped 60 percent. One out of three days, visibility is less than 10 miles, the others around 30 miles.
The Shenandoah National Park, say the experts, is very sick and unless the present administration and future ones to come, do something to contain and reduce the pollution that is enveloping the park, the situation will get only worse, damaging the ecosytems irreparably.
Last week, a press conference was held atop Crescent Rock Overlook on Skyline Drive. The event was co-sponsored by the National Parks and Conservation Association, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Conservation Council of Virginia and the Sierra Club.
The primary purpose of the conference was to allow the media to see nowadays exactly what a view from the location really looks like and secondly, to explain what has happened to the park and why.
According to David Carr Jr., a Public Lands Project director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, “Congress has given both EPA and the National Park Service legal
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