Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park, established in 1935 in northern Virginia, protects a long, narrow ribbon of the Blue Ridge Mountains overlooking the Shenandoah Valley. Created from worn-out farmland that nature has reclaimed into forest, it is threaded end to end by Skyline Drive, a 105-mile scenic road running along the crest with overlooks at nearly every bend. The park brought a great mountain wilderness within easy reach of the cities of the East Coast.

Today the regrown hardwood forest blazes with color each autumn, drawing crowds to the ridgeline drive, and shelters black bears, deer, and a famous abundance of wildflowers and waterfalls in its hollows. As one of the closest mountain parks to Washington, D.C., it has long been a beloved escape, and its recovery from cleared farmland into wild forest is itself a quiet success story.

• Virginia
  The Old Dominion, from the Chesapeake to the Blue Ridge located in
• The Appalachian Mountains
  The ancient, worn mountains of the eastern U.S. protects