Lydia Mountain: the Spirit of Success

By Susan Gibbs

Stanardsville’s Buck Shifflett is a visionary who has made it his business to follow his dreams.

And that’s a good thing, says Greene County Director of Economic Development Tony Williams.

“At Lydia Mountain Lodge & Log Cabins he has captured the spirit of a bygone era and turned it into a major tourist attraction,” says Williams.

“Buck started out with a mountain store, then bought a 122-acre mountain bordering Shenandoah National Park and built cabins,” Williams continues. “He added a pavilion, cut trails for bicycling and hiking and installed all-season tubing, a zip-line course, a rock climbing wall, and rope courses.”

These days the log cabins are consistently occupied, the Lydia Mountain Pavilion is in constant use as the site of dinner shows, weddings, reunions, church functions, birthday parties, and more. Now, Shifflett is eyeing the team building market.

There can be no question that Lydia Mountain is a success, and that success is due, in large part, as Williams says, to spirit.

That spirit springs from the mountain people who once inhabited the Blue Ridge and its foothills; people who made a conscious choice to live their lives surrounded by wildlife, dogwoods, cherry blossoms, and mountain laurel – long before the well-educated and affluent started moving to the area in pursuit of a rural lifestyle.

Their legacy lives on in those who came after, like Shifflett, who was raised in Mutton Hollow.

“Within the people that have been born and raised here, there lies a kinship, an unusual bond of friendship, family and commitment,” says Tina Deane, who manages Shifflett’s enterprises. “They are driven by their hearts and connected by their souls.”

Settlers first came to Greene in the first half of the 18^th century, but those who settled in the mountainous western county would be isolated from those who settled in the eastern county. Mountain roads were mostly bridle paths and, except on rare occasions, horseback was the only mode of transportation.  Roads would remain difficult to traverse well into the 20^th century.

Isolation bred an interdependency that required residents to share, to form and retain a culture dictated by their environment, and common sense. Neighbor helped neighbor. They raised houses together, held community quilting bees, corn shuckings, sugar stirrings, apple butter boilings, and log rollings. They gathered together as communities to entertain themselves; to play Bluegrass music and put Gospel to song.

Small mountain stores were the heart of these communities, offering up just about everything from dental services and funerals to a loaf of bread and a jug of milk.

They would begin to disappear, along with the communities that surrounded them, in 1926, when the Commonwealth of Virginia began to exercise its power of eminent domain, eventually removing more than 450 families, many by force, to make way for the construction of the Park.

By the time Shifflett was born those stores were all but gone, but the spirit of the communities they served remained.

He would, purposely or otherwise, infuse his creations with that spirit.

The first of his dreams to come to fruition would be the Lydia Mountain Store on US 33 West.

Lydia Mountain Country Store didn’t offer dental services or perform funerals. As the last stop before drivers entered the last leg of their journey up the mountain to Shenandoah National Park, its use was dictated by the environment. While it supplied tourists with a slice of pizza or a cone filled with hand-dipped ice cream, stationary, greeting cards, gift wrap and other sundries, it also sold local antiques.

The Store was filled with the mountain spirit: it was the scene of more than a few hootenannies. Local and not-so-local – and even on occasion the famous – stopped by weekends to do their spontaneous thing, attracting audiences of up to 100 or more.

Now, the Store is being remodeled into Lydia Mountain Motel, which will house efficiencies complete with a kitchen and a washer and dryer – but it was the Store, sometime around its beginning, that led to the development of Lydia Mountain Lodge & Log Cabins.

“When people stopping by the Store asked about places to stay, Buck decided to build the cabins, and a lodge,” smiles Deane.

The rest is history: In May 2002 Shifflett purchased Lydia Mountain and started building rustic mountain log cabins outfitted with wood-burning stone fireplaces and private decks with hot tubs.

“He built the cabins gradually, with a great deal of thought and care going into all. He wanted to make his guests feel warm and comfortable, able to snuggle up by the fire with a hot cup of cocoa, in a place that would blend into the environment,” Deane explains. “Each is set on at least one acre, and each has a mountain view.”

The first cabin finished – in December of that year – is named “Granny B’s” for Shifflett’s grandmother, who was moved out of her home on the mountain to make way for the Park, but still, says Shifflett “spent so many years caring for others.”

“One of the most precious things in life is the opportunity to give back,” says Deane. “Granny B visits us now and again, and her grandson has made it possible for her to enjoy the simple pleasure of sitting back on the front porch and enjoying the mountain atmosphere.”

Granny B’s pleasure might be simple, but the cabin Shifflett named for her is not – at least on the inside.

Representative of all of the log cabins that followed, this pet-friendly, two-bedroom is outfitted with, in addition to a wood-burning stone fireplace and deck with hot tub, a full kitchen equipped with both major and small appliances, cable television, and a built-in charcoal grill out back.

Granny B’s cabin was rented almost as soon as it was finished.

But the cabins were only the beginning: Shifflett finished construction on a 2,864 square foot open-air pavilion complete with a commercial kitchen and a stage in April 2007. Just outside he placed a log playhouse and playground for youngsters, a large campfire pit for roasting hot dogs and brought in a “bouncey house”.

Later that year, the Pavilion was the site of the first Lidda Bidda Mountain Spirit Dinner Show.

Guests – both young and old — were treated to a ride around the property in a covered wagon hauled by a team of Belgian draft horses. They were served a home-cooked meal, and clapped their hands and stamped their feet to the tune of mountain music.

“The show was a great success,” says Deane. “It ran for five years. People came from both sides of the mountain, several times over, and brought friends. They sang along, and even joined the performers on stage.”

And then, in December 2010 Shifflett announced the creation of Lydia Mountain Adventure, featuring Star-Shot Zip Lines, Mountain Tubing Trax, and Guided ATV Tours.

A year later Lydia Mountain hosted its first annual Winter Festival in the Pavilion. The rides were open, Santa was there, music makers were on stage and the only charge for entry was a gift to be left under the tree for a needy child.

It was a well-planned event, with guests wandering here and there, getting their faces painting, singing along – laid back and comfortable, with the spirit of Lydia ruling the day.

Said one guest, who, with her husband, was visiting Lydia Mountain for the first time in response to an ad for the event:  “We are a career military family. Our children now have military families. None of us has ever really been in one place long enough to call it home. This feels like home. It’s so filled with love.”

The love exuded by Lydia Mountain, its history and its staff, is a given.

And so are Shifflett’s visions. While he has outfitted Lydia Mountain to entertain all sorts of team-building activities arranged by professionals, he also comes up with his own ideas.

For example, “We can arrange for city folk to be hiking a trail and come upon a still, watched over by armed mountain men, and see how they react,” he winks.

Shifflett, Deane, the entertainers, and the rest of their family and friends who operate Lydia Mountain are proud of their accomplishments – as is the Greene County government.

The Lydia Mountain complex is a “first class operation,” said Steve Catalano, who was chairman of the Greene County Board of Supervisors when the special use permit that would allow Lydia Mountain Adventure to begin operations was issued. “I was on the board when it was first approved and it has gone places that I don’t think any of us really anticipated.”

It continues to evolve, but its spirit remains unchanged.

Lydia is about 110 miles south of Washington DC, 90 miles West of Richmond, and 25 minutes from Charlottesville or Harrisburg VA. For information on nearby activities and tours that the staff arranges, as well as special packages, visit www.lydiamountainlodge.com.