Skyland: The Heart of the Shenandoah National Park

By George F. Pollock and Harry F. Byrd

First published in 1960, this is the autobiography of George Freeman Pollock, a young Washington, D.C. man who in 1895 founded, built and managed the Skyland Resort, originally called Stony Man Camp, in Virginia.

“The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, separating the eastern or Piedmont and Tidewater sections from the Shenandoah Valley, commence at the south side of the gap at Harper’s Ferry. Thence, stretching out in a southwestwardly direction, they become substantially higher near Front Royal (at the beginning of the Shenandoah National Park) and further on in the Park, in the vicinity of Sperryville to the east and Luray to the west, they reach an apex in lofty Hawksbill Mountain and in the slightly lower though more imposing Stony Man Mountain.

“In 1886, fifty years before the establishment of the Shenandoah National Park, a young man came to Stony Man Mountain and in 1894 (on one of its shoulders, a plateau) he founded a summer resort. Soon known far and wide as ‘Skyland,’ this resort was and, to a degree, still is the heart of Stony Man Mountain as well as of the area surrounding it and until 1937, the young man (he never grew old) was the soul of Skyland.”—STUART E. BROWN, JR.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789125597

George F. Pollock

GEORGE FREEMAN POLLOCK (1869-1949) was the founder, builder and manager of the Skyland Resort in Virginia. He was born in 1869, the son of George H. Pollock, a prosperous Washington, D.C. importer, and Louise Pollock, a pioneer in American kindergartens and who wrote and transcribed journals, song books and education manuals. He studied taxidermy at the Smithsonian Institution under Dr. William T. Hornaday, who in 1886 asked him to collect specimens of small animals. When Pollock’s father suggested that his son do so on Virginia’s Stony Man Mountain, Pollock Jr. fell in love with the scenic splendor of the region, and set out to share his enthusiasm with others by creating a rustic resort… STUART ELLETT BROWN (1916-2004) was an American lawyer, author and editor. Born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Stuart Ellett Brown Sr. and Dakota Janney Best Brown, he graduated from the University of Virginia and was admitted to the Virginia State Bar Association and Maryland Bar. He practiced law in Baltimore, Md. and Berryville, Va., and served in the U.S. Navy during WWII. He was a member of numerous organizations, including the Virginia Historical Society, and past president of the Northern Shenandoah Valley Chapter of the University Alumni Association. He was the author of Annals of Blackwater and the Land of Canaan (1959) and The Horses of Arlington (1964). HARRY FLOOD BYRD SR. (1887-1966) was an American newspaper publisher and political leader of the Democratic Party in Virginia for four decades as head of a political faction that became known as the Byrd Organization. He was instrumental in the creation of Shenandoah National Park, as well as the Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Virginia state park system. Shenandoah National Park’s main visitor center is named in his honor, and the Blue Ridge Parkway bridge over the James River in Big Island was named and dedicated to him in 1985.

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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SKYLAND

THE HEART OF THE SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK

BY

GEORGE FREEMAN POLLOCK

WITH A FOREWORD BY SENATOR HARRY F. BYRD

of Virginia

EDITED BY

STUART E. BROWN, JR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 6

INTRODUCTION 8

FOREWORD 9

CHAPTER I—STONY MAN MOUNTAIN 16

CHAPTER II—EARLY DAYS ON THE MOUNTAIN 30

CHAPTER III—GLEN ECHO AND THEN BACK TO THE MOUNTAIN 47

CHAPTER IV—STONY MAN CAMP 56

CHAPTER V—THE GAY NINETIES 66

CHAPTER VI—THE 1900’s 82

CHAPTER VII—SOME MEMBERS OF MY STAFF 92

CHAPTER VIII—MY GUESTS 109

CHAPTER IX—OUR MOUNTAINEERS 125

CHAPTER X—NOTES ON ADDIE NAIRN POLLOCK 144

CHAPTER XI—SPECIAL EVENTS 156

CHAPTER XII—SOME SNAKES 182

CHAPTER XIII—THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK 191

CHAPTER XIV—AUTUMN LEAVES 212

TAPS 236

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY 240

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 241

DEDICATION

To G. F. P.

How we love him, dear old Polly,

Direst foe of melancholy!

What a joy it is to hear

Morning greeting full of cheer.

Bugle blowing, singing laughter,

Baying beagle trailing after,

He awakes us, glad and gay

To another Sky land Day.

Whose the laughter, song and quip

Brightens every all-day trip?

Round the campfire who but he

Fills our hearts with gaiety?

Who such pranks e’er invented?

Who could act quite so demented?!

Thunders roar and storm clouds lower

Polly cheers us—‘Tis a shower!

Or he chuckles "Let it pour

Rain means garden sass galore!"

When he sets himself to charm

Even snakes can do no harm.

Is it strange were mad about him?

Skyland would be sad without him.

Not a small thing ‘tis you know

To spread sunshine where you go.

(Written by a Skyland guest during the 1920’s).

INTRODUCTION

The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, separating the eastern or Piedmont and Tidewater sections from the Shenandoah Valley, commence at the south side of the gap at Harper’s Ferry. Thence, stretching out in a southwestwardly direction, they become substantially higher near Front Royal (at the beginning of the Shenandoah National Park) and further on in the Park, in the vicinity of Sperryville to the east and Luray to the west, they reach an apex in lofty Hawksbill Mountain and in the slightly lower though more imposing Stony Man Mountain.

In 1886, fifty years before the establishment of the Shenandoah National Park, a young man came to Stony Man Mountain and in 1894 (on one of its shoulders, a plateau) he founded a summer resort. Soon known far and wide as Skyland, this resort was and, to a degree, still is the heart of Stony Man Mountain as well as of the area surrounding it and until 1937, the young man (he never grew old) was the soul of Skyland.

STUART E. BROWN, JR.

Berryville, Virginia

FOREWORD

George Freeman Pollock

by

Senator Harry F. Byrd

(Speech delivered on October 14, 1951 at the Dedication of Pollock Knob in the Shenandoah National Park)

When the name of a man becomes attached to the landscape—as have the names of many during the centuries since Europeans first discovered and explored and mapped this continent—he attains thereby a kind of immortality. It might be added with respect to many of the names which crowd the maps with large print and small that the naming of a natural feature often, at the same time, sows the seeds of controversy over the origin of that name. The recording of history has by now attained a certain degree of perfection. We may be fairly certain, therefore, that future generations who visit and enjoy Shenandoah National Park will find it easy to ascertain that Pollock Knob was given its name to honor George Freeman Pollock. They will learn, we hope, that he was the founder of Skyland, and, more important, that he was a person who may rightly be credited with a large share of responsibility for the fact that the National Park exists here. Thus, we may be assured that, in the Park itself and in that feature of it which bears his name, he has attained a measure of immortality which carries with it the acclaim of Well done!

If the young Pollock who found his way to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the mid-nineties had been typical of his age and generation he would probably have seen there on the peaks and canyons principally a means of enriching himself through denuding them. Instead, he seems almost from the beginning to have felt their beauty deeply and very speedily to have determined both to conserve as much as he could of what the Creator had supplied and to make it possible for others to share his enjoyment.

The people who come to Skyland today approach over modern highways, traversing the Blue Ridge over the Skyline Drive and only a small fraction of them find it easy to picture, perhaps on the basis of personal experience with the old carriage road from the Valley below, what conditions were like when Pollock first began his development. Fortunately for us, he put his Blue Ridge experiences on paper and consequently we are able to gain some conception of what he found and of the motives which moved him from the beginning.

Some seventy years ago this region, which now extends a hearty welcome to over a million and a half visitors a year, was by no means eager for the invasion of its ridges and its hollows by strangers. It took more than vision—it took very real courage for young Pollock to move in and establish himself.

It is a great pleasure to me to speak of George Freeman Pollock. Often one is asked to pay tribute to a stranger but in speaking about George Pollock, I speak of an acquaintanceship extending over forty years. He and my father were intimate and devoted friends and, as well as I can recall, I came first to Skyland with my father in 1907–08. The only way to then reach it was by the dirt road up the Mountain and all travel was by horseback or buckboard. I shall never forget the day that I was a passenger in the first auto that came up the steep trail—it was a steamer and all Skyland turned out to meet us.

My first recollection of Pollock himself is of him on horseback blowing a bugle at 7:00 a.m.—that was when people got up early.

My personal interest in Shenandoah National Park as well as in George Freeman Pollock is, of course, of very long standing. The honor of appointing the members of the first Commission on Conservation and Development was mine and it was also during my term as Governor that the land-acquisition program for the Park—an undertaking of vast proportions and many difficulties—was launched by the Commission under the able and enthusiastic leadership of the late William E. Carson of Front Royal who devoted many years of his life to the Park as did many others. But Pollock was a warm friend of my father’s and of mine, and we were warm friends of his, before that. My father owned a little cottage at Skyland, which was called Bird’s Nest and which he gave me as a wedding present—Mrs. Byrd and I spent our honeymoon there.

If Pollock had lost his hold on the Mountain and on the other acreage which he came eventually to own, and the Park had been established anyway, it would have been quite a different park, deprived of much of the natural beauty which gives it distinction. For he stayed the hand of the logger, and he exerted himself to prevent forest fires or to confine their damage. That was a time when a large segment of the public concerned itself very little indeed with the destruction of the forests by fire; we have witnessed a vast change in the public attitude in this matter throughout the nation, and particularly throughout the South, during the past three or four decades.

Particularly revealing of his attitude is his account of the persistent manner in which he labored to prevent the logging of the Skyland portion of the Blue Ridge. I recall one incident of this. In 1928, as Governor, I recommended a state appropriation of one million dollars and while the park lands were being purchased, Pollock sent word to Carson and me that in White Oak Canyon the best of the timber was being cut and we were able to act in time to save it. Incidentally, on my inspection trip at that time—it was early in December—Carson dared me to go in swimming in the pool at the top of White Oak Falls—and both of us went in.

Since Pollock felt as he did about protecting the natural beauty of the Skyland portion of the Blue Ridge, it is not surprising that he became inflamed with the idea of making a National Park out of it when Interior Secretary Work appointed a Committee in 1924 to recommend some area in the Southern Appalachians for that very special status. Since Pollock first came to the Blue Ridge Country he had been a salesman of its beauty, and a good one; but the appointment of the Committee presented a double challenge—first to convince some of his nearby friends of the superiority of that portion of the Blue Ridge north and south of Skyland to the Massanutten Mountains which had its staunch advocates; then to induce the members of the Committee, already fully sold on the qualities of the Great Smoky Mountains, to look at something else. His great achievement, in connection with the establishment of Shenandoah National Park—aside from his successful protection of so much of it against fire and ax and saw—was that he did get all the members of the Committee to inspect the present park area, and under circumstances calculated to build a friendly attitude among them. In arranging for these inspections, Pollock went to great pains to brush out trails and overlook points, to construct observation towers and thus to prepare as much as possible for them to see thoroughly the beautiful scenery that the area offered. He also served as their host, entertaining them lavishly, and paying the cost of it out of his own pocket. He was a believer, and a fervid one, in the claims of his part of the Blue Ridge to national parkhood and he labored heart and soul to instill that conviction in the minds of the Committee.

There are many who worked hand in hand with Pollock in this effort, and his written account makes frequent and generous mention of those who played a part in working for the establishment of the Park. I have never heard of anyone who, either as a guest at Skyland or as a fellow worker, failed to become his friend. He had that priceless gift, a great capacity for friendship. He was always in a good humor and that quality, combined with an almost equally valuable gift, the capacity for enthusiasm, made him a personality.

The thing he worked for had, happily, long been a reality before his death. He saw the building of the Skyline Drive and of other developments among the mountains he loved so greatly; more important, he saw people, by the hundreds of thousands, and from all parts of America, enjoying what he had struggled so earnestly to save. He labored greatly; we may feel sure that he felt that he had been rewarded greatly, too.

I well recall that in 1933 I was riding from Panorama to Big Meadows with President Roosevelt on the occasion of the dedication of the Shenandoah National Park. Prior to that time, Mr. Hoover had been instrumental in constructing a road from Panorama to his camp at Rapidan. I remarked to the President that I thought it would be a fine idea to continue this road along the crest of the Blue Ridge to the Great Smokies. He replied and said, Harry, I am all for it and we should start in New England. Later I heard he had made efforts to do this but did not get the cooperation of the governments of the States through which the road would run. He then said if I would confer with Secretary of the Interior Ickes, who was with the party, that he would allocate funds to connect the Shenandoah Park and the Great Smokies. I was made chairman of the committee to obtain rights-of-way from the three States—Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. A part of the program was for the States to donate a 1000-foot right-of-way. I devoted considerable time to this, and I am glad this project is on its way to completion.

In thinking of George Freeman Pollock, I recall many personal incidents. He could handle snakes without being bitten, he kept a bathtub full of snakes and he would frequently bring one or more snakes into the Dining Hall. And, as far as the Dining Hall is concerned, each week he would go to market and bring back the most delicious things: lobster, shrimp, oysters, etc.

Pollock loved the out-of-doors. He loved the mountains. He wanted others to have the same enjoyment he had (and I happen to know that his financial operations at Skyland were conducted at substantial losses).

There is something in the mountains that brings to one a contentment and peace of mind—that gives to every mountain lover a happiness that should be treasured. I have climbed every peak in the Park—my favorite is Old Rag which I climb as often as I can every year. I can sit on Old Rag or Hawksbill or Stony Man or Mary’s Rock or the Pinnacles or Bald Top or Bushy Top for hours with intense pleasure watching the shadows, the changing colors and the majesty and grandeur of the Blue Ridge—to me the most beautiful I have ever seen.

I have spent many happy days at Skyland and if the Lord permits, I expect to spend many more.

We can all think of George Freeman Pollock as a benefactor of his fellow man who has left behind him a heritage of good will and of wholesome pleasure in the Shenandoah National Park. The Bible tells us: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help. In the tragedies and the other strain of our modern world, generations to come will receive a peace of mind and new hopes in lifting their eyes to the peaks and canyons of the Shenandoah National Park and those who made possible its establishment can justly feel that their labors were not in vain.

It was not only appropriate and proper that the promontory near Skyland, reaching more than 3,500 feet into the Heavens, be named after George Freeman Pollock; it is a matter of simple justice to a great American.

CHAPTER I—STONY MAN MOUNTAIN

IN 1873 when I was four years old{1} my family moved to Washington, D.C., but the climate there did not agree with me and at the age of ten I was sent back to the family farm at Weston, Massachusetts. There I worked and went to school (at the Allen Brothers’ English and Classical School in West Newton, Massachusetts) until I was strong and healthy enough to return to Washington and attend public schools. It was the intention of my family to educate me as all of the other children had been educated, i.e., to enter the teaching profession, but I had no liking for that. I resisted and, I am afraid, was a rather bad boy, stealing off to go hunting, fishing, camping or just to get out into the woods, frequently with only Dicky Daddies, my dog, for company. I longed for the wilderness and for adventure and all efforts to interest me in anything else failed.

At about this time William T. Hornaday,{2} Chief Taxidermist of the Smithsonian Institution, was busy with a plan for creating a Zoological Garden and it occurred to me that if I could be of any service to him he would, in return, allow me to become a student in the taxidermy work rooms. Thus I could become a naturalist and this would, perhaps, afford me an opening for the kind of life I wished to lead.

I was fifteen years old and small for my age but I was very much in earnest and presenting myself at Mr. Hornaday’s office, I told him my story. He appeared amused at my proposition but finally said that he would talk with my mother (who was well known in Washington educational circles because of her Kindergarten Normal School) and shortly afterwards Mr. Hornaday paid her a visit. She took him to my rooms on the top floor of our home which, being sort of attic rooms, were turned over to me for specimens, pets, etc. They contained deer heads and skins, aquariums, a couple of live owls, a raccoon, several flying squirrels and, in fact, the rooms were devoted to natural history. One small window opened out onto a flat roof and there I had several tanks in which I was breeding pollywogs and small fishes. Mr. Hornaday was sufficiently impressed by what he saw to give me a position without salary.

At that time at the Smithsonian, William Palmer and his father, two of the best taxidermists in the country, were making beautiful casts of live snakes and there were quite a number of captive snakes in the rooms where I worked. My duties, however, consisted of fleshing (skinning) animals and when I became versed in taxidermy in a small way, Mr. Hornaday began to send me out on expeditions to collect small mammals in nearby Virginia and Maryland.

Then it was that my father, George H. Pollock, told me about the 5,371 acre Stony Man Mountain Tract in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It seems that in about 1845–1850 there had been a copper boom in the Blue Ridge. Quite a number of companies were organized to investigate and explore the region and in 1850 the Miners’ Lode Copper Company, Inc., with stock-holders mostly from New York and vicinity, began operations on its Stony Man Mountain Tract. Although my father had never seen the Tract, he and Stephen M. Allen of Boston, President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, were the principal stock-holders in the Company which also owned the 5,000 acre Dark Hollow Copper Mine Tract on Haywood Mountain in Madison County.

The copper ore, however, was hard to work and the Stony Man and Dark Hollow mines proved to be worthless, the small pockets of accessible ore having been worked out even before the Civil War put an end for that generation to all operations in the Blue Ridge and in most of Virginia.

My father told me that he understood that native mountaineers, other squatters and Shenandoah Valley residents were helping themselves and selling to the tanneries of Luray and Sperryville large quantities of chestnut and oak tanbark from the Stony Man Tract. Also, he had heard that thousands of chestnut ties were being cut and hauled away and that many cattle were being pastured on the Tract. Finally, although the mine was worthless, my father suggested that the Tract might furnish excellent hunting and a visit to it on one of my collecting expeditions might be productive of financial returns.

After receiving permission from Mr. Hornaday and obtaining what little information Mr. Allen could procure for me in Boston, I started out in October of 1886, at the age of 16, with my collecting outfit, shotgun and beagle hound (Dicky Daddies) for Page County, Virginia, with no further information than that the Tract was located on a mountain called Stony Man. My instructions were to put up at Luray, to there make inquiry for the mountain area where a mine had been worked some thirty-five years before and to seek out a man by the name of Printz whose father, it was understood, had boarded the miners and could give me the information I desired.

Arriving in very primitive and undeveloped Luray during a rainy period, I put up at a little place known as the Long Hotel, hired a horse, buggy and driver and went out through the Valley searching for Mr. Printz. There were many Printzes in the vicinity, it being a common name, and I met with numerous disappointments but finally I arrived at the home of John David Printz, a fine old brick house{3} near the foot of Stony Man Mountain. When I met Mr. Printz and told him my story he said: Yes, my father boarded the Stony Man Mountain miners at this home. He stated that he was familiar with the Stony Man Mountain Big Survey and said that when the weather cleared, he would be glad to take me on a trip to the Mountain and show me what there was to be seen. However, he refused to board me, stating that he and his wife, Lavinia, had a large family and that they had no arrangements for taking care of strangers. The rain was falling, it was gray and dismal—so dismal that no mountains could be seen—I was cold and hungry and I asked Mr. Printz again and again to take me in. Finally he said that he would go and talk to his wife and while he was in the house, I prompted the buggy driver to hurry on back to Luray. Mr. Printz came out saying that Lavinia absolutely could not take care of me but there I was in the rain, my buggy was gone and Mr. Printz had little choice.

After entering the Printz home, I became one of the family. I had my banjo and the children took a liking to me at once because I sang songs and told stories. These country people were real country people in those days and I had no trouble in making myself most welcome.

On the fourth morning I awakened to find the sun shining, the atmosphere clear as crystal and the panorama of the Blue Ridge spread before my youthful gaze. Beauty beyond description! In my limited travels I had never seen a mountain and I was thrilled and most anxious to get off on my first tour of inspection.

A good lunch was packed in a leather bag and Mr. Printz and I, with my dog, started out.

It was six miles to Stony Man Peak over a trail which consisted of blazed trees and which, in many places, was blocked by fallen timber and was almost impassable. The Mountain and the area surrounding it were undeveloped wildernesses, the only access from the Valley being an old, single horseback mining trail. Known as the Jones Slide because of a very steep place near the summit (where it passed over solid rock in a sort of a gutter), this trail had been used in the 1850’s for carrying to the Valley on donkey-back such ore as was smelted at the Stony Man Copper Mine.{4}

The smelting plant was located at Furnace Spring and to this day considerable slag and other materials can be found in the area. The open field or plateau, the present site of Skyland, was then heavily timbered and charcoal made there was used in the mining operations. The ore was carried, donkey-back, from the mine around the north and east sides of the peak to the furnaces.

After the mining operations were abandoned, the entire Stony Man Tract was used and despoiled by practically everybody living in the vicinity. Those who lived on the western slopes of the ridge and at the foot of the Mountain—Sam Sours, Peter Sours, the Somerses, Printzes, Burackers and Woodwards—were getting bark, wood, poles, lumber and everything else off the land and had been doing so for many years. On the eastern slopes and particularly in the hollows, mountaineers called Tuckahoes{5} had squatted on the land for several generations, being so little disturbed that many of them thought that they owned the cabins in which they lived as well as large parcels of land surrounding them. A few Valley farmers on the other hand had legally acquired small mountain tracts (sometimes these tracts were miles apart) to use as pasture lands during the summer, employing mountaineers to look after and salt the cattle. The mountaineers were wild and wooly, particularly in the area known as Free State Hollow (so named because, for excellent reasons, sheriffs and deputy sheriffs stayed out and the people practically ruled themselves).

As we approached the top of the Mountain, Mr. Printz filled my listening ears with tales of bad mountaineers and, particularly, of an outlaw known as Fletcher who lived within a mile of Stony Man Peak.{6}

Fletcher, his wife and two very young children had come upon the scene some two years previous, appropriating an old deserted, dirt-floored log cabin in which they made their home and for which Fletcher had constructed furniture out of rustic poles. This cabin was located on a small tract of land which was owned by Peter Sours, a well-to-do Valley farmer, and lay inside of the Stony Man Tract. Sours had used it as a pasture during the summer months but Fletcher had chased his cattle off, warning Sours that if he came up in the mountains he would kill him.

Mrs. Fletcher, short of stature and very rough looking, always carried a huge horse pistol strapped around her waist while Fletcher was never without his old-fashioned squirrel gun which had a long barrel and which, Mr. Printz assured me, was loaded with tacks, making it a terribly dangerous weapon.

Fletcher, a stranger to the mountains, systematically intimidated the mountaineers, ordering them not to use the trails that came his way and when he met a mountaineer within