The word Shenandoah was derived from a Native American expression for "Beautiful Daughter of the Stars." The Valley Pike (or Valley Turnpike) began as a migratory trail for tribes such as the Delaware and Catawba, who called it the Great Warriors Trail. Later colonists called it the Great Wagon Road, and it became the major thoroughfare for immigrants moving by wagons from Pennsylvania and northern Virginia into the backcountry of the South.
The road was refined and paved for motor vehicles. In the 20th century, the Valley Turnpike was a toll road. Then it was acquired by the Commonwealth of Virginia which incorporated it into the state highway system as U.S. Highway 11. For much of its length, the newer Interstate 81 parallels the old Valley Pike.
The Shenandoah Valley is a productive agricultural region. Despite the great promise of the rich farmland of the Valley, colonial settlement from the east was mostly barred by the barrier of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They had been crossed by Governor Alexander Spotswood's legendary Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition at Swift Run Gap in 1716, but settlers did not follow.
Instead, the Valley was first settled by German and then by Scots-Irish immigrants from Pennsylvania in the 1730s. The former were known as "Shenandoah Deitsch." Both stocks came south into the Valley from the Potomac River. The Scots-Irish comprised the largest group of immigrants from the British Isles before the Revolutionary War, and most migrated into the backcountry of the South.[1] This was in contrast to the chiefly English immigrants who had settled the Virginia Tidewater and eastern Piedmont regions.
The Shenandoah Valley was known as the breadbasket of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was the site of battles between Union and Confederate forces.
In the late 20th century, the valley's vineyards began to reach maturity. They constituted the new industry of the Shenandoah Valley American Viticultural Area.
