Hiking at Hanging Rock to celebrate the park?s 75th anniversary

“What did you guys do for fun when you weren’t working?” I ask the guy. “Any girls we could find!” Hoots and giggles fill the Bathhouse at Hanging Rock State Park, where one Dr. Harley Jolley is just about done regaling us with tales of life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, which sent him to Yellowstone during the Great Depression and built the stone structure we’re sitting in for his presentation. Hanging Rock has been there for a billion years, I suppose, but the park named in its honor is a more recent innovation, dating to 1936. A reunion and celebration of the park’s 75th birthday on Saturday spanned generations of people who built the park and readied it for recreation. Last year more than a half-million people came to Hanging Rock. This morning I googled Dr. Jolley and found out he’s published a book on the CCC and appeared in a PBS “American Experience” episode devoted to the Civilian Conservation Corps. (Watch it here). He’s quite a remarkable guy: Pearl Harbor survivor, retired professor of American history, authority on the Blue Ridge Parkway — and deft performer. He knew when to be funny, when to be poignant. He worked [...]

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