Excerpt of interview with Ralph Lee Barnard, May 4, 2019 by Mills Kelly

Ralph Lee Barnard (b. 1939, age 80) is the grandson of John R. Barnard, the Appalachian Trail keeper in Patrick County from 1930-1952. His wife’s name is Hope and they live in the home that was John Barnard’s in Meadows of Dan, although today that house is made of brick and has a garage that Ralph added. John Barnard was featured in a story in National Geographic Magazine about the Appalachian Trail in 1948, and Ralph specifically remembers the hikers staying in his grandfather’s barn and talking with them. He was 13 when the trail moved west and had a lot of experience helping his grandfather with the hikers, especially helping them hike through the Dan River Gorge and over the famed Pinnacles of Dan.

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Interviewer: What did you do to make money when you were young? 

Ralph Barnard: When I was growing up here I used to hunt squirrels for a man nearby. He would pay me 25 cents if I hit them in the head. So, I got me a good 22 rifle and made pretty good money shooting those squirrels and selling them to him. We used to eat squirrels a lot in those days. Everybody did.

Now those hikers, they had a lot of panther stories. You know, a panther screams like a woman. Sometimes the hikers thought it was a woman they’d heard and were worried about it.

I used to run trap lines for mink down along the river. I was pretty good at it. One of my uncles taught me how to set my traps. I set’m carefully under the banks and in places the minks would go. Other people, they’d hunt down there with dogs and none of their dogs ever put a foot in one of my traps, so I had’m set in good places. If I got a mink, I got $200 for the pelt. That was before the mink farms started, so people paid a lot of money for just one mink. 

We used to go coon hunting down in the valley a couple of times a week.

My grandfather made that big arrowhead thing all by himself. He found all those arrowheads and pieces of pottery and such and then he made a mold in the sand and poured the cement into it and places all the stuff on it. Then he made another one and put the two sides together to make what you see in the picture here. That’s still down here.

Gallery Walk

Now answer the following questions:

What options did people have for transportation during the early 1900’s?  So, why were the stores and schools important to the community and to people passing through?  Why do you think a few of the stores have survived?