Big Meadows, Shenandoah: A Designed Landscape Built by the CCC in the Rustic Style

Big Meadows, in Shenandoah National Park, is a designed landscape: a visitor area laid out in the 1930s so that buildings, roads and plantings would fit the mountain scenery. The National Park Service (NPS) describes how it came to be and how it is managed today.

The big meadow south of Skyline Drive gives sweeping views from the road, the visitor center and the Wayside area. NPS.

A park, a road and a depression

In 1924 the U.S. Secretary of the Interior formed the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee, which saw the potential for a scenic drive along the Blue Ridge in northern Virginia, with views of the Shenandoah Valley to the west and the Piedmont to the east. A drought in 1930 and the Great Depression added a motive: jobs and economic relief for the region. Construction of Skyline Drive began in 1931, during the Hoover Administration, through the NPS and the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Public Roads. Congress authorized the park on May 22, 1926, along with Great Smoky Mountains and Mammoth Cave.

The Wayside station on Skyline Drive at Big Meadows in the late 1930s, with the parking lot, a planted island and plantings installed by the CCC. Dead chestnut trees in the background came from chestnut blight. NPS / Shenandoah National Park Archives.

The Civilian Conservation Corps

Six CCC camps were set up in the park. The one at Big Meadows, Camp NP-2, was later named Camp Fechner after the CCC's director, Robert Fechner, who died in 1939. It housed about 200 men, and began as surplus tents, field kitchens and latrines before barracks, an infirmary, administration buildings, a garage and a recreation building went up. The crews did erosion control, removed dead chestnut trees, planted trees and shrubs, and built trails, shelters and picnic areas with drinking fountains, tables and fireplaces. A nursery at the northeastern edge of the meadow grew native plants to steady and blend in road cuts and fills. In the early 1930s Big Meadows was also named a national soaring site for sailplanes, and the CCC built a runway and temporary hangar.

Seed and transplant flats in the nursery at the CCC camp. NPS / Shenandoah National Park Archives.

Building it out

The NPS produced the park's first Master Plan in 1935 and revisited it each year until 1940. On July 3, 1936, President Roosevelt dedicated the park at Big Meadows. The CCC built the picnic grounds and campground (1937); the park's concessionaire, the Virginia Sky-Line Company, built five cabins (1938), the Big Meadows Lodge and Wayside (1939) and employee housing (1941); and the NPS built the maintenance area (1939). Facilities were closed for most of World War II, and use grew after the war, speeding up in the early 1950s.

A map from the 1940s showing the planned development. NPS.

In the late 1950s the NPS's Mission 66 program, timed for the Service's fiftieth anniversary in 1966, expanded the campground with a new loop and trails such as the "Story of the Forest" Trail, and built the Byrd Visitor Center, a split-level building with large plate-glass windows over the meadow.

Why it matters, and how it is kept

The rustic style meant restoring altered landscapes to their original condition with native plants, building views into the layout, hiding buildings as much as possible and using local materials and traditional methods. Big Meadows still has its historic layout, with areas grouped by function and linked by one main road: the Wayside and visitor center, picnic grounds, lodge and cabins, campground and maintenance facilities. Treatment aims to strengthen the qualities of the historic period while serving visitors and protecting natural and cultural resources, through careful vegetation management. Because the meadow cannot be restored to its former extent, the plan opens limited forest areas and converts some turf to meadow vegetation. The area is managed in six zones: lodge and cabins, campground and picnic area, Wayside and visitor center, maintenance and employee housing, roads and trails, and the meadow.

The views from the lodge terrace are kept by maintaining a tree-free area just below the lodge. NPS.

Panoramic views of the valley remain from the lodge, the cottages and the original campground section. But poor air quality has reduced visibility of the Shenandoah Valley and the western mountains, and overgrown vegetation obscures some views.

Sources

• National Park Service, Shenandoah National Park, Big Meadows Cultural Landscape; rewritten in hubnx's own words.