Secrets of the Blue Ridge: Lost Communities of the Blue Ridge

By Phil James -January 10, 2021

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Wayside Brethren Church, at the intersection of the north fork of Moorman’s River and Black Rock Gap Road, was one of five churches that served the greater Sugar Hollow community in western Albemarle County. Courtesy of Helen Via Stogdale.

Life in these Blue Ridges, as it had been for generations upon generations, was targeted for drastic change in the 1920s when the Commonwealth of Virginia’s politicians and business interests were enticed by the siren song of tourist dollars.

Proposing a new national park for the eastern United States, the federal government’s offer pitted state against state, with a requirement that the land be gifted to the government and be devoid of residents. Such a scheme had worked fine in the west where vast expanses were still owned by the government. In the east, centuries of population growth had left no such uninhabited swaths.

When Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains were identified as a prime possibility for a new national playground, the inconvenient reality of hundreds, if not thousands, of longstanding mountain residents had to be surmounted. With the news media at their behest, and an ever-increasing public clamor for new parkland, a subtle campaign was undertaken by the Commonwealth that maligned and summarily disregarded the individual rights of its very own citizens—all under the guise of the state’s right of eminent domain.



Minnie (Garrison) Via (1883–1982), wife of Daniel C. Via (1877–1930), at home with her children on the north fork of Moormans River, western Albemarle County. Following Daniel’s death, and, later, isolation brought about by the establishment of Shenandoah NP, Minnie moved with her children to Pennsylvania and married Henry Via who earlier had relocated there from Sugar Hollow. Phil James Historical Images Collection.

Even before legal challenges to the forceful taking of these several hundred thousand acres of privately occupied lands could be heard, groundwork was begun in earnest to prepare for the masses of anticipated visitors. The most visible court challenge came from a small but determined group headed by Sugar Hollow landowner Robert H. “Bob” Via. On January 13, 1935, in the U.S. District Court at Harrisonburg, Via’s lawsuit challenging Virginia’s right to condemn and confiscate private land in order to gift it to the federal government was struck down.

Bob Via’s subsequent appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., was cut short and abruptly dismissed on the Monday before Thanksgiving in 1935. Shenandoah National Park was signed into existence one month later on the day after Christmas.

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Follow Secrets of the Blue Ridge on Facebook! Phil James invites contact from those who would share recollections and old photographs of life along the Blue Ridge Mountains of Albemarle County. You may respond to him through his website: www.SecretsoftheBlueRidge.com or at P.O. Box 88, White Hall, VA 22987. Secrets of the Blue Ridge © 2003–2021 Phil James