Clock Work Orange
resettlement
This is not an ironic statement... some random, inexplicable place from nowhere.
In Madison, Virginia, is this little enclave, established by the US Government in the 1930s.
In the zeal to put people back to work, to beautify the country, to take advantage of natural resources, to create a recreational money-maker in the far backyard of the Nation's capital, the Skyline Drive was proposed. Enveloping the spine of the Blue Ridge mountains and the surrounding slopes, a National Park arose.
Problem: there were already people living there... since the early 1700s. Entire communities flourished for centuries in the hollows below and throughout the proposed Park. Some left, willingly. Others, whose familial history was as rooted into those hills as the bedrock, were less enthusiastic.
But, In The Name Of Progress, leave, they did... the more fortunate, to little government-created resettlement villages, like here.
For the others, media campaigns were launched, painting them as "unfortunates", "hillbillies", "feeble-minded" and worse. Their fate is an ugly stain on the nation's history.
Still, the homes that they lived in, those that weren't bulldozed in some Grapes Of Wrath scenario, still lie within the Park boundaries. Some reused, most returning to the soil. Forgotten, until stumbled upon by hikers.
But the signs remain.
resettlement
This is not an ironic statement... some random, inexplicable place from nowhere.
In Madison, Virginia, is this little enclave, established by the US Government in the 1930s.
In the zeal to put people back to work, to beautify the country, to take advantage of natural resources, to create a recreational money-maker in the far backyard of the Nation's capital, the Skyline Drive was proposed. Enveloping the spine of the Blue Ridge mountains and the surrounding slopes, a National Park arose.
Problem: there were already people living there... since the early 1700s. Entire communities flourished for centuries in the hollows below and throughout the proposed Park. Some left, willingly. Others, whose familial history was as rooted into those hills as the bedrock, were less enthusiastic.
But, In The Name Of Progress, leave, they did... the more fortunate, to little government-created resettlement villages, like here.
For the others, media campaigns were launched, painting them as "unfortunates", "hillbillies", "feeble-minded" and worse. Their fate is an ugly stain on the nation's history.
Still, the homes that they lived in, those that weren't bulldozed in some Grapes Of Wrath scenario, still lie within the Park boundaries. Some reused, most returning to the soil. Forgotten, until stumbled upon by hikers.
But the signs remain.