The Shenandoah Valley () is a geographic valley and cultural region of western Virginia and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia in the United States. The Valley is bounded to the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the west by the eastern front of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians (excluding Massanutten Mountain), to the north by the Potomac River, to the south by the James River, and to the Southwest by the New River Valley. The cultural region covers a larger area that includes all of the Valley plus the Virginia Highlands to the west and the Roanoke Valley to the south. It is physiographically located within the Ridge and Valley Province and is a portion of the Great Appalachian Valley.
Geography Named for the river that stretches much of its length, the Shenandoah Valley encompasses eight counties in Virginia and two counties in West Virginia: Augusta County, Virginia Clarke County, Virginia Frederick County, Virginia Page County, Virginia Rockbridge County, Virginia Rockingham County, Virginia Shenandoah County, Virginia Warren County, Virginia Berkeley County, West Virginia Jefferson County, West Virginia
The antebellum composition included four additional counties that are now in West Virginia as well as four additional Virginia counties:Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, Why Confederates Fought, Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2007, pg. 26 Morgan County, West Virginia Hampshire County, West Virginia Hardy County, West Virginia Pendleton County, West Virginia Botetourt County, Virginia Alleghany County, Virginia Bath County, Virginia Highland County, Virginia
The cultural region includes five more counties in Virginia: Highland County Bath County Alleghany County Botetourt County Roanoke County
Between the Roanoke Valley in the south and Harpers Ferry in the north, where the Shenandoah River joins the Potomac, the Valley cultural region contains 10 independent cities: Winchester Harrisonburg Waynesboro Staunton Lexington Buena Vista Covington Roanoke Salem
The central section of the Shenandoah Valley is split in half by the Massanutten Mountain range, with the smaller associated Page Valley lying to its east and Fort Valley within the mountain range.
Notable caves The Shenandoah Valley contains a number of geologically and historically significant limestone caves: Dixie Caverns Grand Caverns, designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973 Endless Caverns Luray Caverns, designated a National Natural Landmark in 1974 Melrose Caverns Shenandoah Caverns Skyline Caverns
Etymology The word Shenandoah is of unknown Native American origin. It has been described as being derived from the Anglicization of Native American terms, resulting in words such as Gerando, Gerundo, Genantua, Shendo and Sherando. The meaning of these words is of some question. Schin-han-dowi, the "River Through the Spruces"; On-an-da-goa, the "River of High Mountains" or "Silver-Water"; and a Haudenosaunee word for "Big Meadow", have all been proposed by Native American etymologists. The most popular, romanticized belief is that the name comes from a Native American expression for "Beautiful Daughter of the Stars".Julia Davis, "The Shenandoah", Rivers of America, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1945, pp. 20–21
Another legend relates that the name is derived from the Haudenosaunee chief Sherando (Sherando was also the name of his people), who fought against the Algonquian Chief Opechancanough, ruler of the Powhatan Confederacy (1618–1644). Opechancanough liked the interior country so much that he sent his son Sheewa-a-nee from the Tidewater with a large party to colonize the valley. Sheewa-a-nee drove Sherando back to his former territory near the Great Lakes. According to this account, descendants of Sheewanee's party became the Shawnee. According to tradition, another branch of Haudenosaunee, the Senedo, lived in present-day Shenandoah County. They were exterminated by "Southern Indians" (Catawba or Cherokee) before the arrival of white settlers.Carrie Hunter Willis and Etta Belle Walker, 1937, Legends of the Skyline Drive and the Great Valley of Virginia, pp. 15–16.Doddridge, p. 31.
Another story dates to the American Revolutionary War. Throughout the war, Chief Skenandoa of the Oneida, a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nation based in New York, persuaded many of the tribe to side with the colonials against the British. Four Haudenosaunee nations became British allies and caused many fatalities and damage in the frontier settlements west of Albany. Skenandoa led 250 warriors against the British and Haudenosaunee allies. According to Oneida oral tradition, during the harsh winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge, where the colonials suffered, Chief Skenando provided aid to the soldiers. The Oneida delivered bushels of dry corn to the troops to help them survive. Polly Cooper, an Oneida woman, stayed some time with the troops to teach them how to cook the corn properly and care for the sick. General Washington gave her a shawl in thanks, which is displayed at Shako:wi, the museum of the Oneida Nation near Syracuse, New York. Many Oneida believe that after the war, George Washington named the Shenandoah River and valley after his ally."Cultural Heritage: American Revolution ", July 5, 2010, Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin"The Revolutionary War ", July 5, 2010, Oneida Indian Nation
History
1st to 10th centuries The period in the Shenandoah Valley from 2000 to 1100 years ago (0 to 900 CE) is called the Middle Woodland Period. Residents of the time built settlements on the floodplains of major rivers and had a tradition of burials in stone mounds, often located on bluffs above their settlements. These mounds were about 20 feet in diameter and were used to bury one or two people, presumably leaders of their community.
17th century Despite the valley's potential for productive farmland, colonial settlement from the east was long delayed by the barrier of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These were crossed by explorers John Lederer at Manassas Gap in 1671, Batts and Fallam the same year, and Cadwallader Jones in 1682. The Swiss Franz Ludwig Michel and Christoph von Graffenried explored and mapped the Valley in 1706 and 1712, respectively. Von Graffenried reported that the Indians of Senantona (Shenandoah) had been alarmed by news of the recent Tuscarora War in North Carolina.
18th century Governor Alexander Spotswood's legendary Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition of 1716 crossed the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap and reached the river at Elkton, Virginia. Settlers did not immediately follow, but someone who heard the reports and later became the first permanent settler in the Valley was Adam Miller (Mueller), who in 1727 staked out claims on the south fork of the Shenandoah River, near the line that now divides Rockingham County from Page County.John W. Wayland, Ph.D., 1912, A History of Rockingham County, Virginia p. 33–37
The Great Wagon Road (later called the Valley Pike or Valley Turnpike) began as the Great Warriors Trail or Indian Road, a Native road through common hunting grounds shared by several tribes settled around the periphery, which included Haudenosaunee, Siouan and Algonquian-language family tribes. Known native settlements within the Valley were few but included the Shawnee occupying the region around Winchester, and Tuscarora around what is now Martinsburg, West Virginia. In the late 1720s and 1730s, Quakers and Mennonites began to move in from Pennsylvania. They were tolerated by the natives, while "Long Knives" (English settlers from coastal Virginia colony) were less welcomed. During these same decades, the valley route continued to be used by war parties of Seneca (Haudenosaunee) and Lenape en route from New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to attack the distant Catawba in the Carolinas, with whom they were at war. The Catawba in turn pursued the war parties northward, often overtaking them by the time they reached the Potomac. Several fierce battles were fought among the warring nations in the Valley region, as attested by the earliest European-American settlers.Joseph Doddridge, 1850, A History of the Valley of Virginia p. 1–46
Later colonists called this route the Great Wagon Road; it became the major thoroughfare for immigrants' moving by wagons from Pennsylvania and northern Virginia into the backcountry of the South. The Valley Turnpike Company improved the road by paving it with macadam prior to the Civil War and set up toll gates to collect fees to pay for the improvements. After the advent of motor vehicles, the road was refined and paved appropriately for their use. In the 20th century, the road was acquired by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which incorporated it into the state highway system as U.S. Route 11. For much of its length, the newer Interstate 81, constructed in the 1960s, parallels the old Valley Pike.
Along with the first German settlers, known as "Shenandoah Deitsch", many Scotch-Irish immigrants came south in the 1730s from Pennsylvania into the valley, via the Potomac River. The Scotch-Irish comprised the largest group of non-English immigrants from the British Isles before the Revolutionary War, and most migrated into the backcountry of the South.David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.605–608 This was in contrast to the chiefly English immigrants who had settled the Virginia Tidewater and Carolina Piedmont regions.
Along with the Ulster Scots many Irishmen arrived in the Shenandoah valley, usually after their indentured service was up. These Irishmen usually had converted to Protestantism or kept their faith secret. In the 18th-century Thirteen Colonies and the independent United States, while interethnic marriage among Catholics remained a dominant pattern, Catholic-Protestant intermarriage became more common (notably in the Shenandoah Valley where intermarriage among Ulster Protestants and the significant minority of Irish Catholics in particular was not uncommon or stigmatized), and while fewer Catholic parents required that their children be disinherited in their wills if they renounced Catholicism, it remained more common among Catholic parents to do so if their children renounced their parents' faith than it was in the rest of the U.S. population.
Governor Spotswood had arranged the Treaty of Albany with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois or Six Nations) in 1721, whereby they had agreed not to come east of the Blue Ridge in their raiding parties on tribes farther to the South. In 1736, the Haudenosaunee began to object, claiming that they still legally owned the land to the west of the Blue Ridge; this led to a skirmish with Valley settlers in 1743. The Haudenosaunee were on the verge of declaring war on the Virginia Colony as a result, when Governor Gooch paid them the sum of 100 pounds sterling for any settled land in the Valley that was claimed by them. The following year at the Treaty of Lancaster, the Haudenosaunee sold all their remaining claim to the Valley for 200 pounds in gold.Joseph Solomon Walton, 1900, Conrad Weiser and the Indian Policy of Colonial Pennsylvania p. 76-121.
The few Shawnees who still resided in the Valley abruptly headed westward in 1754, having been approached the year before by emissaries from their kindred beyond the Alleghenies.Doddridge, p.44–45
During the American Revolutionary War, the Valley functioned as a vital source of manpower and supplies for the Continental Army. Local agricultural production provided substantial quantities of wheat, rye, and corn to American forces. Regional iron furnaces and blacksmith shops shifted toward manufacturing firearms, wagons, and ammunition, bypassing the British naval blockades affecting eastern ports.Hart, Freeman H. The Valley of Virginia in the American Revolution, 1763–1789. University of North Carolina Press, 1942.