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The Appalachian Trail |
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The
Appalachian Trail
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The
Appalachian Trail was the “brainchild” of Benton MacKaye—an
off-and-on federal employee, educated as a forester and self-trained
as a planner, who proposed it as the connecting thread of “a
project in regional planning.” His proposal, drawing on years of talk of a “master trail” within New England hiking circles, was written at the urging of concerned friends in the months after his suffragette-leader wife killed herself. “An
Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning” appeared in the
October 1921 edition of the Journal of the American Institute of
Architects, at the time a major organ of the regional-planning
movement. MacKaye envisioned a trail along the ridgecrests of the Appalachian Mountain chain from New England to the Deep South, connecting farms, work camps, and study camps that would be populated by eastern urbanites needing a break from the tensions of industrialization. |
Eighty years ago, a dreamer named Benton MacKaye imagined a footpath running along the eastern mountains, from New England to the southern Appalachians. That dream became the Appalachian Trail, America’s premier long-distance hiking experience, stretching more than 2,174 miles between Maine and Georgia.
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Its
terrain ranges from flat woodland paths to near-vertical rock
scrambles that challenge the fittest wilderness trekker; it can lead
hikers from busy town streets to high mountain ridges where they
won’t cross a road for days. The
Trail continues to inspire dreams. If you’re one of the many
millions of people who plan to visit or walk the Appalachian Trail,
you’ll find it to be worth your time. Online
help, rules, regulations and tips can be found on the National Park
Service website:
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Copyright 2005, Blue Ridge Digest Publishing Company
All rights reserved.