Blue Ridge Country January/February 2023 - 26

CURIOS
COURTESY WARREN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COURTESY US ARMY SIGNAL CORPS
IF THOSE HILLS COULD TALK . . .
Secrets of 3,200
Acres in Virginia
Since 1909, a beautiful tract of land near Front
Royal has carefully guarded a varying set of notso-public
identities.
By JILL DEVINE
L
ess than four miles from the northern
entrance to the Skyline Drive
near Front Royal, Virginia, lies a
3,200-acre tract of pretty Shenandoah
Valley land that has a lot of
stories to tell.
Some of which can actually be told.
Today, the site is home to the Smithsonian
Conservation Biology Institute
(SCBI), where scientists conduct research
in animal behavior, reproduction, genetics,
migration and ecology to save wildlife
species from extinction.
Not that you can see it first-hand. Because,
while a few university students live
on the property and actually wake, dine
and study amid the likes of clouded leopards,
cheetahs, mountain zebras, red pandas
and other threatened species, the former
one-day-a-year public visitation has
not been resumed since COVID stopped it.
That restricted status has been true of
the site for most of the years since its first
26 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
iteration, in 1909, when the U.S. Army
began purchasing what became almost
5,000 acres to build equestrian facilities including
stables, barns and other buildings
and to provide fresh supplies of horses and
mules to the military. From the vast pastures,
animals were delivered via rail from
Front Royal through WWI and WWII.
The Front Royal Quartermaster Remount
Depot, as the facility was known,
pioneered breeding practices that included
some 18,000 mares a year, and yielded the
Olympic Champion Thoroughbred Jenny
Camp and several Kentucky Derby winners
as well as Man o' War-generally regarded
as the greatest racehorse of all time.
During WWII, the property was also
used as a War Dog Reception and Training
Center; an animal cemetery still exists
on the property, with gravesites for noteworthy
steeds and canines.
The next identity for the land was relatively
short-lived: In the war years until
1946, it served as a camp that housed
some 600 German and Italian prisoners of
war, who worked as laborers on Shenandoah
Valley farms. Only a few foundations
remain from the temporary structures
where they were held.
By 1948, the property had been taken
over by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
which, in conjunction with Virginia
Tech-then more often known by its full
name of Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University-carried out research
on Angus, Hereford and Shorthorn cattle
toward the improvement of meat production.
The culmination of those efforts
may well have been the 1972 status as the
state's largest-and the nation's fourth
largest-Shorthorn registry.
Meanwhile, beginning in 1952, the Department
of State began renovating some
abandoned structures for a program with
the code name RABBIT-a relocation site
and communications station for continu
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Blue Ridge Country January/February 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country January/February 2023
