Douthat State Park is a state park located in the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia. It is in Bath County and Alleghany County. The park is total with a lake, making it the third-largest Virginia state park after Pocahontas State Park and Fairy Stone State Park. It is one of the six original Virginia state parks, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The Douthat Land Company, a group of businessmen headed by Robert Douthat, donated the first portion of land â https://studylib.net/doc/7495082/douthat-research-paper. In 1933, the Virginia General Assembly allotted $50,000 for the purchase of land for state parks, and the remainder of the present-day park was purchased with this money. Initially built over a period of three years, Douthat State Park opened on 15 June 1936 alongside the other five original state parks in Virginia, all built with the men and resources of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The site of the park was originally almost completely covered by forests; all of the original cabins, campsites (White Oak, Beaver Dam, and Lakeside), trails, roads, and even the entirety of Douthat Lake were created by the CCC work crews.
Approximately 600 men from the Civilian Conservation Corps developed and constructed the majority of the modern-day park between 1933 and 1942.
From the park's opening in June 1936 until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Virginia state law barred non-whites from visiting Douthat State Park. The segregationist Byrd machine (named for and led by long-serving Senator Harry F. Byrd) that had controlled Virginia politics for decades was by then faltering, and Douthat State Park, along with the rest of the Virginia state park system, ceased imposing racial segregation in 1965.
Whispering Pines Campground, a newer campground designed specifically to accommodate RV's, was added to the park in the 2010s after the private RV campground formerly occupying the land closed and sold the land to the Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation.
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