History of the Appalachian Trail
The A.T. began as a vision of forester Benton
MacKaye He envisioned a trail that would offer the urban dweller
an escape. The Appalachian Trail opened as a continuous trail in 1937.
It was designated as the first National Scenic Trail by the National
Trails System Act of 1968.
Shortly after the turn of the 20th century,
the conservation movement in America was launched by President Teddy
Roosevelt. In the northeast many proposals had been made prior to
1921 to create a "super" trail. but it was Benton MacKaye's
"An
Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning" published
in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects in October
of 1921, that really sparked the conservationist into action.
The original proposal was for a footpath to
run from the highest point in the northern Appalachians being Mt.
Washington and New Hampshire, to the highest point in the southern
Appalachians being, Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina. Within a year
work began on "America's Footpath within two years members of
the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference completed and opend the first
section of the Appalachian Trail in the Palisade Interstate Park,
from Pennsylvania to Connecticut across theBear Mountain State Park
in New York.
By 1925, at a meeting in Washington, DC, leaders
of local hiking clubs founded the Appalachian
Trail Conference (ATC) which expedited the dream towards reality.
Major William A. Welch, ATC's first chairman and manager of the Palisade
Interstate Park was to oversee the construction and management of
the Trail. At this meeting, the group also decided that the Trail's
route would run 1700 miles from Cohutta Mountains in Georgia to Mt.
Washington in New Hampshire with possible extensions to Katahdin,
Maine to the north and Birmingham, Alabama to the south.
Little was known by the ATC about the North Georgia mountains and
they mostly planned the trail by referring to maps. So Roy Ozmer,
woodsman and friend of Georgia Ranger Arthur Woody was put in charge
of exploring the area from Virginia to Georgia. Togther knowing the
area, they felt that extending the Appalachian Trail to Mount Oglethorpe,
east of Jasper, was a better choice for the end of the trail. Woody
assisted personally in the construction of the route in Georgia from
Bly Gap to Mount Oglethorpe, which was completed in 1931.
Construction accelerated in the late 1920s.
Myron Avery who was Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) co-founder, and the chairman
of ATC durring 1931-1952, tirelessly recruited volunteers for the
Trail and scouted, blazed, and built many miles himself. By the end
of 1934, more than 1900 miles of the AT was complete.
As the Trail continued to take shape it became
clear that Avery and MacKaye had very different visions of the Appalachian
Trail . Avery saw it as a trail for people to enjoy outdoor recreation.
MacKaye's saw the trail as a connection between working communities.
The Skyline Drive project in Shenandoah National Park further highlighted
their differences. Avery saw it as good publicity for the AT and thought
the road would speed the trail's construction (In fact Civilian Conservation
Corps workers did build a section of trail around the Drive). MacKaye
believed that roads had no place on wilderness ridges and saw such
roads as business conspiracies to make money as they destroyed wilderness.
MacKaye no longer wanted to be associated with the AT project; he
focused his energy instead on the Wilderness Society which he co-founded
in 1935.
On August 14, 1937 the trail was completed.,with
the clearing of the last 2 miles between Spaulding and Sugarloaf Mountains
in Maine. At the time the trail stretched from Mount Katahdin in Maine's
Baxter State Park to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia. The trail, as envisioned,
was a "ridge-line" trail, going from high-point to high-point,
along the highest route available becoming a continuos footpath connecting
Georgia and Maine.
Because of hurricanes, war and neglect, the
trail was being reclaimed by natureand fell into disrepair. A hurricane
in 1938 destroyed large portions of its New England path as it swept
up the coast and did heavy damage to the Trail. With the advent of
WWII a year later, volunteers and fuel were in short supply . Then
the connection of the Skyline Drive to the Blue Ridge Parkway in the
1940's displaced a section of the trail 120 miles long.
In the early 1950's interest renewed in the
trail and it was not until 1951 that the Appalachian Trail was continuous
again. The designation of the Appalachian Trail as a National Scenic
Trail was a long political battle lasting 15 years, ending with President
Lyndon Johnson signing the National Trails System Act in 1968. This
act, originally intended to protect the land near the Appalachian
Trail was rewritten to include any footpath designated as a National
Scenic Trail. Today "America's Trail" and others in the
National Scenic Trail System, with few exceptions, are on land that
is federally protected.
Through the years development, such as ski
resorts, mountain subdivisions, highways, and logging, has forced
the Trail's route to change. In 1958 overdevelopment near Mt. Oglethorpe
in Georgia necessitated the movement of the AT's southern terminus
20 miles north to Springer Mountain
