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BY GERALD OCHS
Rappahannock News Special Writer
In 1920, Addie Naim Pollock financed the purchase of a portion of the Limberlost Swamp in order to prevent the destruction of a stand of virgin hemlocks. Her husband, George Freeman Pollock said that "... the idea in our minds at that time was that some day, sooner or later, this area would be used for public recreation purposes. We had no idea, however, of a federal park or even of a state park, in saving these trees.”
The efforts of the Pollocks, and the then Governor Harry F. Byrd and hundreds of other visionary citizens and politicians, resulted in the creation of a nearly 200,000 acre preserve that came to be known as the Shenandoah National Park.
The establishment and mission and even the operation of the park has not been Without controversy: there are many still who remain resentful of the treatment of their forebears, the mountaineers, who were removed as parkland was acquired; there are those who objected to the park’s early and mostly successful efforts to eradicate any and all evidence of human habitation, thus destroying what would now be considered historically significant homesteads and mountain farms; and there are those today who criticize the “yuppification” of the park and laugh at the endless streams of weekend autohikers who cruise the Skyline Drive and rarely leave the confines and protection of their air-conditioned Accords.
There are few however who can deny the beauty of the parkland, and there are none who can unequivocally argue that the park’s beauty is not seriously threatened. Revisit Addie Naim Pollock’s Limberlost and see the results of the one-two punch of the hemlock woolly adelgid and the hemlock borer. Look at the oak defoliation and dieback attributable to the gypsy moth and resultant stresses. But most importantly, understand the effects of pollutants carried from industrial areas to our west and south, and you will understand that the park is but a breath away from disaster.
As they might have said, “it doesn’t take an environmental scientist .. . . “ And it does not. The basic health of the park’s ecosystems has been degraded by airborne pollutants, and made even more vulnerable to disease
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