tration]

In many parts of the Basin, old human excesses that in their time were
not at all beneficial or protective have contributed paradoxically to
the present good condition of the landscape. After boom had lifted her
skirts and moved on elsewhere from the weary Tidewater, for instance,
the region's long subsequent drowse on the fringes of action and history
meant that it escaped many modern troubles, at least until recently. Not
very long ago, many parts of it were more easily reached by slow boat
than by car or train. Partly as a result, big tracts of military land
there acquired mainly when acreage was cheap--57,000 acres around the
Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, are one example--form a
valuable public asset for potential future use. And throughout Tidewater
here and there, old estates in private hands guard their woods and
fields and shores against increasing development, though more and more
each year crumple before pressure and the temptation of speculators' and
developers' cash.

Similarly, after the mountains of the upper parts of the Basin were
logged bare and in many places burned off in the late 19th and early
20th centuries--"Cut out and get out" was the slogan--their stripped and
eroded state and their effect on the streams made it possible, and
essential, for the Federal and state governments to buy up wide areas
there as public forest land in the 1930's and to nurse them back to
beauty and usefulness. The Shenandoah National Park dates from that same
time, as do some state parks in the mountain regions. Some private
owners of forest land in that area, though not enough, have taken their
cue from the government agencies and seek a safe sustained yield of
timber and pulpwood rather than a quick cash-in.

In many rural reaches of the Basin, for that matter, the kind of use
private ownership gives the land is still an enhancement of the
landscape rather than a smear on it. The beauty of farm land and
pastures and old structures is as much a part of this country's heritage
as is wilderness, for in its traditional forms farming has shaped a
kind of wholeness and beauty all its own, blending with nature and
working with it. The limestone soils in the huge trough of the
Shenandoah Valley, for example, have been tilled and grazed during about
two and a half centuries' occupation by white men. But for the most part
agriculture there has been devoted to continuing productivity rather
than to expl