Produced by Mark C. Orton, Louise Pattison and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net LEGENDS of the SKYLINE DRIVE and the Great Valley of Virginia BY CARRIE HUNTER WILLIS AND ETTA BELLE WALKER RICHMOND, VA.: THE DIETZ PRESS, _Publishers_ 1940 COPYRIGHT, 1940 BY CARRIE HUNTER WILLIS AND ETTA BELLE WALKER _Printed in the United States of America_ Foreword Tucked away among the hills and valleys in and near the Shenandoah National Park and the Great Valley of Virginia are stories of the beginnings of the white man's life beyond the comparative ease of early Tidewater Virginia. These stories are true ones and they depict something of the courage and hardihood of the early Virginia pioneer. Perhaps in reading of their lives we may catch something of the majesty and charm of their surroundings which were reflected to a marked degree in their way of living. Surely they must often have said, "I will look unto the hills from whence cometh my strength" or how else may we account for the developments which came as the result of their constant struggle for survival? Stories of colonial Virginia on the eastern seaboard are numerous and usually exciting but they are quite different from the tales beyond the Piedmont. A combination of them may enable us to know Virginia as a whole in a more appreciative way. Long before the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe ever set foot in the wilds of Virginia, intrepid explorers had passed through various parts of the Valley country. In 1654--more than sixty years before the Governor's expedition--Colonel Abraham Wood received permission to explore beyond the mountains. His purpose was to establish trade relations with the Indians. His journey carried him through the lower Blue Ridge, crossing the range near the Virginia-North Carolina line. Reference is made elsewhere of the explorations conducted by the one-time monk, John Lederer, whose journal of the trip was first translated from German and published in London in 1672. Let us plainly understand however that each of these trips was of a migratory nature; not a thought was entertained by any of the participants of remaining in the Virginia mountains. Any white man found in these sections at this time was there because of good hunting grounds, hopes of good trading, the zeal of a missionary spirit or love of adventure and exploration. The earliest settlers in the Valley in most part came either from Maryland or Pennsylvania. They came in search of rich, cheap land or for economic reasons or in the hope of establishing greater freedom for themselves and their children.