Blue Mountain Memories

Blue Mountain Memories, Richard Long's current book, resulted from his building a vacation cabin at Blue Mountain in 1972. The mountain was in the great range of 5 million Shenandoah Valley acres owned by Lord Fairfax of Winchester. As a young man, George Washington was hired by Lord Fairfax in 1748 to be his surveyor. It is likely that Washington surveyed what was later to become Blue Mountain. Mosby's Rangers, the Southern guerilla fighters of the Civil War, hid out on the Mountain and made raids, from there, on Union forces. The earliest settlers of what was to become Blue Mountain and nearby Rattlesnake Mountain were escaped slaves. A community still exists on Rattlesnake that is proud of its African-American ancestors. The mountain came alive again in 1955 when an exuberant Frenchman and his wife, Henry and Colette de Longfief, purchased 800 acres from lumberman James McDonald. They named it Blue Mountain. This book is about the fascinating history of the mountain and the people from all over the world who eventually settled on the mountain.