Broad Hollow Homesite - Shenandoah National Park VA
N 38° 36.183 W 078° 16.999
17S E 736570 N 4276228
The ruins of an old home stand near a trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Waymark Code: WMAC7H
Location: Virginia, United States
Date Posted: 12/23/2010
Views: 12
Settlers first came to the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia in the mid 1700s. They built homes and roads, cleared land and planted crops and orchards, and raised livestock. Most of the houses were simple log cabins with a single room, a loft, and a fireplace. Some of the homes were isolated, while others were clustered into communities. Many generations of families lived on the mountain and in the hollows.
In the early 1920s, it was proposed a national park be established in the Appalachian Mountains and Shenandoah National Park was born. All the residents had to leave. Some went willingly and were relocated and resettled into nearby communities while others had to be forced from the only home they had ever known.
Shenandoah NP was officially dedicated in 1936.
Mother Nature is slowly reclaiming the land but there are still road traces, evidence of homesites (rock walls, foundations, chimneys, and artifacts), and over 100 family cemeteries in the Park. Most of the sites are overgrown and have been lost in the woods and very hard to find requiring strenuous bushwhacking. Along the Broad Hollow Trail though, four walls of an old log cabin home can still be seen. It is very rare to find a house with its walls still standing, most have rotted away and all that remains are the stone foundations. This home even escaped the fire that raged through this area in 2000. Even though the walls are crumbling, it stills stands defiantly as hikers pass by. Quite a few families lived in Broad Hollow and there are other homesites, but this one is the most easily accessible and seen. In the spring, daffodils from the garden still bloom. Metal pieces from buckets and/or pots can still be found on the grounds. (Please do not take any artifacts. Leave them for others to enjoy and besides, it is against the law.) Further down the trail is the spring.
The Broad Hollow Trail can be accessed inside the Park via the Hazel Mountain Trail which starts at MP 33.5 on Skyline Drive where there is a parking area or from outside the Park at the trailhead on SR 681. There is very limited parking. Please be respectful of private property. For more info and a topo map, see Broad Hollow Hike
at upwardhiking.com.
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