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Chapter 10 Cultural Resources In all, the scope of JNF cultural resources spans the entire period of human prehistory and history of southwestern Virginia. Documentation and preservation of these resources has contributed, in its modest way, to a more detailed understanding of the greater region, Appalachian history, and environmental history. The cost-sharing, or matching-funds policy, has allowed the JNF to coordinate its own work with nonagency archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and geographers. But, technically, JNF cultural resource work has fundamentally differed from that undertaken in academia. In the past, perhaps especially during the difficult early years of launching a new and very different endeavor within the agency, some Forest Service archaeologists themselves complained that cultural resources in general received the very least attention of any division. These critics charged that the Forest Service did not treat cultural resources as a true resource at all, but rather only as a support resource for timber management and road construction , or as a necessary and unavoidable evil, given the federal laws requiring protection of historic and prehistoric sites and artifacts. Early wildlife biologists and later botanists might have levied the same charge. Increasingly since its inception, the Forest Service has attempted to some degree or another to protect or at least recognize prehistoric and historic cultural materials on all national forests.1 The once-private and corporate landholdings now constituting the JNF have rendered the public a great variety of historic cultural resources. The evidence and interpretations of this past human activity not only holds significant inherent value but also contains keys to understanding the actual physical state of the land and the woodlands themselves. The current forest environment, of course, reflects substantial previous human impact. In 1935 Congress passed the Historic Sites Act in an attempt to “provide for the preservation of historic American sites, buildings, objects, and antiquities of national significance.”2 Thirty-one years later, as part of the Great Society’s urban renewal goals, Congress enacted the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act.3 The 1969 National Environment Policy Act required Environmental Impact Assessments, which initiated a cultural resource survey (particularly for archaeological sites) prior to timber sales. But it was the 1974 150 j Cultural Resources Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act that put archaeologists permanently on national forest staffs.4 This law required all federal agencies, including the Forest Service, to survey its territories for archaeological artifacts and evidence of historic significance before building roads, conducting timber sales, or otherwise disturbing the ground in a manner that could potentially damage such material.5 The 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act gave substantial punishments for crimes involving the looting of archaeological sites.6 Only a small fraction of southwestern Virginia’s prehistoric sites have been excavated or studied, and many more remain to be discovered. Unfortunately, much of the fragile archaeological record has already been permanently destroyed or damaged to the point of seriously compromising its scientific value. Careless or crude excavations and indiscriminate artifact gathering in the past have all seriously marred the prehistoric record. Even more ominous, latetwentieth -century looting of prehistoric sites, which has become something of a cottage industry in some parts of the southern Appalachians, threatens to obliterate precious information still awaiting discovery and analysis.7 With archaeological sites now legally protected from destruction by building development or highway construction, the misguided (if predictable ) assignment of monetary value to projectile points and other artifacts perpetuates the human threat to southwestern Virginia’s distant past. Despite the destruction wrought by a long history of private collectors and pot hunters, JNF archaeologists and other professional and amateur prehistorians have managed to piece together at least the beginnings of southwestern Virginia prehistory. By the 1990s JNF cultural resource management began enjoying a shift in emphasis that gave somewhat more favor to nontimber resources. Southwestern Virginia features even more historical evidence than archaeological artifacts on present JNF holdings. Since private individuals or corporate entities once owned all of the JNF’s 700,000-plus acres, the historic cultural resources are especially rich. Since 1911 federal acquisitions have rendered the JNF sites of old logging and mining operations, railroad beds, iron furnaces, farmsteads, and other homesteads. Notable features include two Civil War sites (though many Civil War expeditions crossed present JNF territory), an incline railroad operation, and several nineteenth-century turnpikes. Significant architectural features and their surrounding histories include the Green Cove Train Station, the Konnarock Lutheran Girls School, and part of the Hagan Estate, once the home of a...

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