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William E. Carson, of Riverton, was the first chairman of the Virginia Conservation Commission, 1926 - 34. As such he was a pioneer and leading spirit in the establishment of the Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive, the Colonial National Historical Park, the State Parks, and the State System of Historical Markers.
William E. Carson (1870-1942) received the Pugsley Silver Medal “for creating from nothing an extensive and varied state park system in Virginia, for helping to establish the Colonial National Monument and Richmond Battlefield Park, and for furthering the Shenandoah National Park project on the Blue Ridge.” He was appointed Virginia’s first chairman of the state’s Conservation and Development Commission in 1926.
Although his accomplishments in this capacity were many, it is Shenandoah National Park which stands as the most enduring reminder of Carson’s spirit, passion and dedication to the State of Virginia. Perhaps even this monument does not fully encompass the generous spirit of a man who spent eight years establishing the park in an office that paid him no salary.
Carson had been a leading advocate of the movement to establish a national park in the southern part of the Appalachian Mountains, and exhorted others to recognize the potential economic value of such a park: “It behooves the State to search out all the hidden wealth which may be found in her minerals, her water resources, her parks, her forests, her history, her scenery, her climate, and all her other natural and physical attractions.”
The lobbying effort for a new national park was successful. In May 1926, Congress passed a law authorizing the creation of a 521,000-acre Shenandoah National Park. The bill mandated that no federal money be used to purchase the park lands; instead, state and private funds would have to be utilized to make the purchases. Consequently, the park did not immediately spring into existence, for it would not officially obtain national park status until the state transferred title of a certain minimum amount of acreage to the United States. While Congress reduced this minimum acreage figure on several occasions, it took the state nearly ten years to complete the necessary land purchases.
Carson realized it would be difficult to raise the funds to purchase the land. Park boosters had suggested the 521,000 acres could be bought for $2 million, but Carson believed the 3,250 houses which sat on the 5,650 different tracts of land would command a price of over $6 million dollars. To curtail the cost of land purchases, Carson prevailed upon Congress in 1928 to reduce the minimum acreage needed for the park to be established to 321,000 acres. This action did not solve the commission’s problems, for it still had to deal with the owners of several thousand individual tracts of land. Complicating matters was the fact that many residents did not own proper title to their land and were uncertain as to the exact boundaries of their property.
Carson ruled out the possibility of negotiating separate agreements with each landowner. “It was manifestly hopeless to undertake to acquire the necessary area by direct purchase,” he explained, because “any of the thousands of owners or claimants could hold up the entire project unless paid exorbitant and unfair prices, with jury trials, appeals, and all the endless delays which can be injected into ordinary condemnation proceedings by selfish, stubborn and avaricious litigants.” To avoid such an ordeal, Carson urged the legislature to pass a blanket condemnation law which would allow the state to acquire the necessary land by filing a single condemnation suit in each of the eight counties, a law which would allow the state to purchase the land by right of eminent domain. The idea for such an approach to the land issue came from Carson’s brother, A.C. Carson, who was familiar with blanket condemnation laws from his service as a judge on the Philippines Supreme Court. He convinced his brother that a similar maneuver would work in the Blue Ridge, and in March 1928, Will Carson persuaded the state legislature to pass the Public Park Condemnation Act. The Act called on the state to file a single condemnation suit in each of the eight affected counties and to form a three-person Board of Appraisal Commissioners to assess the value of each tract in the counties. While the law did not take effect until after the Warren County Circuit Court rejected landowner Thomas J. Rudacille’s lawsuit challenging its constitutionality in October 1929, it was the commission’s primary instrument for acquiring land for the future park. Its legitimacy was finally resolved in December 1935 when the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
>p>While the blanket condemnation law helped to bring order to the potentially chaotic land acquisition process, Carson and other park proponents still had to raise the money to purchase the land. Financial support for the project came from many different sources. Approximately $1 million came from state appropriations at the urgings of Governor Byrd. Private donations were an equally important source of funds. With a slogan advocating that Virginians “Buy an Acre” for $6.00, the fundraising drive raised nearly $1.2 million dollars, including nearly $200,000 from Richmond citizens and $100,000 from residents of Norfolk. Park enthusiasts had less success in persuading noted philanthropists to make donations. Carson had hoped to raise $2 million dollars from these notable figures, but only won a small percentage of that amount: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $163,631 and Edsel Ford, $50,000. With the onset of the Depression in 1930 sharply curtailing further fundraising efforts, park supporters had raised only slightly more that half of the estimated $4 million dollars needed to purchase the 321,000 acres. Consequently, Carson once again prevailed upon Congress to reduce the park’s size. In 1932, Congress made its final acreage reduction, drastically reducing the minimum acreage needed for the park to be established to 160,000 acres, less than one-third the original congressional authorization mandated.
The acreage reduction greatly improved the chances that the park would become a reality. So too, did the decision to build a roadway through the center of the proposed park, a decision which itself was a consequence of Will Carson’s successful courting of presidential support for the park. Carson believed that the best way to win this support was to persuade the president that the area’s scenery and rustic beauty made it an ideal site for a presidential retreat. Carson had lobbied Calvin Coolidge on situating a camp in the park, but to no avail. Herbert Hoover, however, expressed interest in the idea, especially when Carson told the president, an avid fisherman, of the excellent trout fishing in the area.
Once Hoover had chosen the area for his camp, Carson set two hundred men to work building a road to the relatively inaccessible site. This project served to revive interest in building a road which traversed the park, a “skyline drive” which the Southern Appalachian Mountains Commission had envisioned in 1924 when it recommended the Blue Ridge for the national park. In 1930, Hoover backed a bill which allowed for the use of drought relief funds to build the first twelve-mile stretch of Skyline Drive.
Carson was a primary influence in establishing the Colonial National Historic Monument embracing Yorktown, Williamsburg and Jamestown. He had worked with Horace Albright on the Shenandoah project and knew of Albright’s interest in bringing eastern historic sites into the NPS. Thus, he wrote to Albright pointing out the 150th anniversary of the Yorktown engagement would come in 1931 and stating, ”How wonderful if the National Government would sense this opportunity and conserve the values contributed from the past, through the present, to the future.” With Albright’s support, Carson then organized tours of the sites for key legislators including the entire House Committee on Public Lands, securing widespread support for the proposal which President Hoover signed into law in 1930.
In addition to his leadership role in Shenandoah and Colonial National Historic Monument, Carson is credited with establishing the state park system in Virginia. His leadership in state parks was reflected by his election to be vice-president of the Conference on State Parks; he reorganized the state forestry and geological departments, and helped form the Virginia State Historical Department; he developed the Virginia system of highway historical markers; he wrote Virginia’s water power laws which were copied by many other states; and he stimulated Congressional interest in park planning.
In the last years of the depression, Carson saw the need for recreational facilities for his hometown of Front Royal which was located at the north entrance to Shenandoah National Park. In 1938, he and his wife donated 63 acres of the Riverton Lime and Stone Company quarry, which the Carsons owned, to the Front Royal Recreational Center Corporation in memory of their only son who had been killed in World War I. He arranged for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to build park facilities on the land, including a small golf course and rustic clubhouse. A living monument to the Carsons and to the CCC, the park still serves the area’s citizens. This was a fitting gift from a man who once said, “I would rather build a park where the plain people of Virginia can spend a pleasant outing and find pleasure and recreation close to nature, than to build a great church or endow a cathedral.”
Carson retired from the Virginia Commission in 1934 during a reorganization that decreased the number of board members and made the chairmanship a paid position. He declined reappointment, stating that his private business precluded him from giving full attention to the job.
Information obtained from Texas A&M website (link no longer functional).