The use of these terms within Shenandoah National Park goes back to usage standards of the 1920s and 1930s, when they were first constructed. At the time, a “hut” was a three-sided open facility that permitted overnight camping or bunking—this type of building is most often known as an “Adirondack”-style shelter these days, or simply a shelter. In the early 1900s, the term “shelter” was used for what we today call a cabin. These were different from the homes of the mountaineers who were evicted from the Park, primarily because they were constructed for the purpose of providing longer term shelter for hikers (or trekkers, the term then used).

Skyline Drive vs. the ATC

A.T. Worktrip near Skyland Resort c.1935

The idea of a “ridge road” along the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia was incorporated into the proposal for a new national park as proposed by the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee in 1924. This idea, proposed by L. Ferdinand Zerkel, was immediately popular with park proponents. Once the new Shenandoah National Park was established, the federal government was committed to construction of a “skyline drive.”

Black Rock Springs Hotel

If you hike down the Paine Run Road [MP 87.4], you’ll pass the site of the Black Rock Springs Hotel less than half a mile below Skyline Drive. (It will be on your right at the wide hairpin turn.) Advertisements claimed the waters at this nineteenth-century spa were “good for what ails you.” One of its seven springs was said to cure gout, another to ease the pains of rheumatism, and still another to help cure baldness. No one knows when the first hotel was built there, but it was mentioned as a resort in a Shenandoah Valley newspaper in 1835. Over the years, the people attracted to the mineral springs found varying accommodations.

You may have noticed that the old road through Brown Gap [MP 82] is called Browns Gap Road east of Skyline Drive and Madison Run Road west of the Drive. Long ago, the gap itself had two names—it was Brown’s Gap to the people east of the mountain crest and Madison’s Gap to people living west of it. In both cases, the gap bore the name of a local land holder.