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Chapter 8 The Mount Rogers National Recreation Area Rising to 5,729 feet on the Smyth and Grayson county line, Mount Rogers and neighboring Whitetop Mountain (5,520 feet) have attracted the attention of explorers, scientists, sightseers, and other visitors for centuries. Wilburn Waters, as legendary as Daniel Boone in some parts of southwestern Virginia , lived the life of a hermit, hunter, trapper, and backwoodsman in the Mount Rogers and Whitetop Mountain area during the nineteenth century.1 In 1835 University of Virginia professor of natural science William Barton Rogers, who later founded MIT, made a geological survey of various areas in southwestern Virginia, including Whitetop Mountain, the coalfields around Pocahontas, and what came to be named after him—Mount Rogers. Dozens of other scientists studied the Mount Rogers area throughout the nineteenth century and up to the present, attracted to various unique aspects of the environment ’s spruce-fir forest, an isolated remnant from the last glacial age.2 Eleanor Roosevelt visited the area in 1933 for the music festival that Whitetop Mountain hosted annually throughout the 1930s.3 Following World War II, as car travel became increasingly popular, a growing number of tourists discovered the Mount Rogers area’s remarkable landscape. During the late 1950s Congressman Pat Jennings, a Smyth County native , visited the Wenatchee National Forest in Washington State to help establish a national wildlife area. At this point, Jennings realized the unique beauty of the Mount Rogers area and began working toward having Congress and the Forest Service give the area some kind of special designation to preserve its scenic qualities.4 In 1961 the Forest Service established the 1,300-acre Mount Rogers Scenic Area, with further studies directed toward a possible Mount Rogers Whitetop Recreation Complex.5 In 1957 and 1958 the Forest Service and Congress launched various planning efforts to address the growing public demands for outdoor recreation, including the creation of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission and the Recreation Advisory Council.6 In 1962 the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission released its massive twenty-seven-volume series , which studied recreation in the United States and covered such diverse 110 j The Mount Rogers National Recreation Area topics as economics, wilderness, land acquisition, user satisfaction, fishing, and hunting. The bulk of America’s NRAs arose out of this context, specifically designed to serve a growing and more diversified recreation clientele.7 In 1963 the Recreation Advisory Council, a cabinet-level committee, envisioned NRAs as fulfilling a function that fit between those of national, state, and local parks.8 The Forest Service would manage NRAs with more flexibility than the Park Service managed national parks in order to accommodate a diversified and, in places, intensive recreational use. NRAs had to be accessible to large urban areas and interstate tourism.9 The choice of the Mount Rogers area, midway between the already overcrowded Shenandoah and Smoky Mountain national parks, and near the future crossroads of interstates 81 and 77—within a day’s drive from Washington, D.C., and other eastern urban areas —became a natural choice. In fact, for some years, a parallel recreational interest in the area developed at state level. In early 1962, State Delegates Lox and Hodges of Grayson County introduced a bill into the Virginia House of Delegates asking for $5,000 to survey the Mount Rogers and Whitetop Mountain area for a possible state park. The House of Delegates approved funding, and by August 1964 the state had begun acquiring land for a proposed state park southeast of Mount Rogers on Haw Orchard Mountain.10 In the following years, the state acquired 4,754 acres for this park, later named the Grayson Highlands State Park. Meanwhile, Congressman Jennings continued to promote Mount Rogers on a federal level. On March 13, 1963, Jennings introduced House Resolution 4824, or the Whitetop Wonderland bill, to the Congressional Committee on Agriculture. This represented the next significant step toward designating Mount Rogers as a special recreational area. Jennings later modified his proposal to fit the Recreation Advisory Council’s NRA criteria.11 Finally, on May 31, 1966, President Johnson signed Public Law 89-438 creating the Mount Rogers NRA in Carroll, Grayson, Smyth, Washington, and Wythe counties, Virginia. At this point the NRA’s proclamation boundaries encompassed 154,000 acres, 84,000 of which the JNF already managed as part of the Holston and Wythe ranger districts. Initial NRA plans called for further land acquisition and recreational development, including 900 family camping units...

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