Dean Family Cemetery Photos



View of the Entire Cemetery

Linen Flower  

 These photographs are of Dean Cemetery, which is within the Shenandoah National Park. It’s completely surrounded by the Park property. An arrangement between the Park and family members allows them to keep the cemetery there as long as they agree to maintain it.
It’s at mile marker 63.2 in the Central District of the park. The earliest birth date belongs to James Dean (born 1797 and died 1862). The range of time of the cemetery is remarkable. There are a few new stones, one with a photograph of a couple embedded into the stone. It’s not a small graveyard, and it’s very open, with trees cleared around the perimeter.

The process which was used to “relocate” the people living within the park boundaries has become a discussion in recent years. The National Park Service web site has an article by Audrey J. Horning, of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and The Queen's University of Belfast. It really shows that the way the “people from the hollows” were described at the time was far from the truth. http://www.nps.gov/shen/historyculture/displaced.htm There is also an article by The Hook (a Charlottesville weekly) that adds much more detail about the deals made around the creation of the park. http://www.readthehook.com/98743/mountain-folk-maligned-pork-propaganda-and-creation-cool-national-park . Creation and Dispossession: Shenandoah National Park and its Residents