Comment from Lisa Custalow

When Shenandoah National Park was created during the 1930s, no part of its landscape was considered "wilderness." More than 500 mountain families lived and worked throughout the land that would become the Park. Their homes, mills, churches, schools, cemeteries, roads, orchards, and subsistence farms were woven throughout the mountains. Following passage of the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act of 1975, the U.S. Congress formally designated portions of Shenandoah National Park as wilderness in 1976. This made Shenandoah one of the most significant examples of applying wilderness designation to a previously settled eastern landscape. The 1976 designation placed approximately 79,000 to 80,000 acres—about 40 percent of the Park—into the National Wilderness Preservation System. These designated wilderness areas are managed to remain roadless and as natural as possible. As a result, new development, motorized equipment, and permanent structures are generally prohibited except under limited circumstances. One aspect of these designated wilderness areas that has often received little attention is their impact on descendant families who continue to maintain ancestral cemeteries within the Park boundary. In The Undying Past of Shenandoah National Park, Darwin Lambert documents more than 110 family cemeteries within the Park. Some of these cemeteries lie within designated wilderness areas, where families maintaining them may use only hand tools, even when clearing large blowdowns or performing other labor-intensive maintenance. Access to family cemeteries within Shenandoah National Park can also be difficult, whether or not they are located within designated wilderness areas. Roads that once provided access to many cemeteries no longer exist. While some cemeteries are accessible from approved trails or fire roads, others require long, strenuous cross-country travel that may be impossible for elderly family members or those with mobility limitations. Descendant families may hold diverse perspectives on the application of wilderness designation to lands that contain their ancestral cemeteries. As future wilderness planning and management decisions are considered, a best practice would be to ensure that the families most directly affected have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public discussion. Submitted by: Lisa Custalow, Co-Founder The Children of Shenandoah (1994), www.lisacustalow.com