The Appalachian Trail, also called the A.T., is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006). "Appalachian Trail FAQs" Outdoors.org (accessed September 14, 2006) The Appalachian Trail Conservancy claims the Appalachian Trail to be the world's longest hiking-only trail. More than three million people hike segments of it each year.
The trail was first proposed in 1921 and completed in 1937. Improvements and changes have continued since then. It became the Appalachian National Scenic Trail under the National Trails System Act of 1968.
The trail is maintained by 31 trail clubs and multiple partnerships and managed by the National Park Service, United States Forest Service, and the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy.(January 1985), "A Fork in the Trail". Audubon. 87 (1):140–141 Most of the trail is in forest or wild lands, but some parts traverse towns, roads, and farms. From south to north it passes through Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Thru-hikers walk the entire trail within a 12-month period. The number of thru-hikes per year has increased steadily since 2010, with 715 northbound and 133 southbound thru-hikes reported in 2017. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy estimates there are over 3,000 attempts to traverse the entire trail each year, about 25% of which succeed. Many books, documentaries, and websites are dedicated to the pursuit. Some hike from one end to the other, then turn around and thru-hike the other way, a "yo-yo".
Affiliated trail sections extend from either end from the north as the International Appalachian Trail into Canada and beyond, and from the south as the Eastern Continental Trail into the Southeastern states of Alabama and Florida.
The Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail informally constitute the Triple Crown of Hiking in the United States.
History
The trail was conceived by Benton MacKaye, a forester who wrote his original plan—called "An Appalachian Trail, A Project in Regional Planning"—shortly after his wife's death in 1921. MacKaye's idea detailed a grand trail that would connect a series of farms and wilderness work/study camps for city-dwellers along the Appalachian Mountains from the highest point in the North (Mount Washington in New Hampshire) to the highest in the South (Mount Mitchell in North Carolina). Hiking was an incidental focus of his plan. In 1922, at the suggestion of Major William A. Welch, director of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, his idea was publicized by Raymond H. Torrey with a story in the New York Evening Post under a large headline reading "A Great Trail from Maine to Georgia"
On October 7, 1923, the first section of the trail, from Bear Mountain west through Harriman State Park to Arden, New York, was opened. MacKaye then called for a two-day Appalachian Trail conference to be held in March 1925 in Washington, D.C. This meeting inspired the formation of the Appalachian Trail Conference, now called the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC). Arthur Perkins, a retired judge, and his younger associate Myron Avery took up the cause.
In 1929, Perkins, who was also a member of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association and its Blue Blazed Trails committee, found Ned Anderson, a farmer in Sherman, Connecticut, who took on the task of mapping and blazing the Connecticut leg of the trail (1929–1933). It ran from Dog Tail Corners in Webatuck, New York, which borders Kent, Connecticut, at Ashley Falls, through the northwest corner of the state, up to Bear Mountain at the Massachusetts state line. A portion of the Connecticut trail has since been rerouted (1979–1983) to be more scenic, adhering less to highways and more to wilderness, and includes the Ned K. Anderson Memorial Bridge.
Anderson's efforts helped spark renewed interest in the trail, and Avery, who led the project after Perkins's death in 1932, was able to bring other states on board. Upon taking over the ATC, Avery adopted the goal to build a simple hiking trail. He and MacKaye clashed over the ATC's response to the construction of a road that overlapped part within Shenandoah National Park; MacKaye left the organization, while Avery was willing to reroute the trail. Avery served as Chair of the ATC from 1932 to 1952, the year he died. He was the first to walk the trail end-to-end, though not as a thru-hike, in 1936. In August 1937, the trail was completed to Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine, and the ATC shifted its focus toward protecting the trail lands and mapping the trail for hikers.
In 1977, the Appalachian Trail Conference honored Paul M. Fink as "the guiding influence" in establishing the Trail in Tennessee and North Carolina in the 1920s. Fink was inducted into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame in 2019. In 1922, only a year after MacKaye's article proposing an Appalachian Trail was written, Fink began corresponding with hiking leaders in New England about building the Trail. When Avery began planning the Trail's route in the south, Fink was the first person he contacted.
Many of the trail's present highlights were not part of the trail in 1937: Roan Mountain, North Carolina and Tennessee; the Mount Rogers high country, including Grayson Highlands, Virginia; the Pochuck Creek swamp, New Jersey; Nuclear Lake, New York; Thundering Falls, Vermont; and Saddleback Mountain, Maine. Except for places where the Civilian Conservation Corps was brought in (mostly in Shenandoah National Park, the Great Smoky Mountains, and Maine), the original trail often climbed straight up and down mountains, creating rough hiking conditions and a treadway prone to severe erosion. The ATC's trail crews and volunteer trail-maintaining clubs have relocated or rehabilitated miles of trail since then.
In 1936, a 121-day Maine to Georgia veteran's group funded and supported thru-hike was reported to have been completed, with all but three miles of the new trail cleared and blazed, by six Boy Scouts from New York City and their guides. The thru-hike was much later recorded and accepted by the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association. In 1938, the trail sustained major damage from a hurricane that went through the New England area. This was soon before the start of World War II, and many of the people working on the trail were called to active duty.
In 1948, Earl Shaffer of York, Pennsylvania, brought a great deal of attention to the project by publicizing the first claimed thru-hike. The claim was later criticized for the hike's omission of significant portions due to shortcuts and car rides. Shaffer later claimed the first north-to-south thru-hike, the first to claim to do so in each direction. Chester Dziengielewski was later named the first southbound thru-hiker. In 1998, Shaffer, nearly 80 years old, hiked the trail, making him the oldest person to claim a completed thru-hike.(October 26, 1998), "Etceteras". Christian Science Monitor. 90 (232):2 The first woman to walk the trail in a single season was Peace Pilgrim in 1952, while the first solo woman to complete the hike was 67-year-old Emma Gatewood, who did it northbound in 1955, taking 146 days. She repeated the achievement two years later, and then section-hiked it in 1964.
In the 1960s, the ATC made progress toward protecting the trail from development, thanks to efforts of politicians and officials. Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson offered legislation to protect the route. The National Trails System Act of 1968 designated the Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail as the first national scenic trails and paved the way for a series of such trails within the national park and national forest systems.Seaborg, Eric (July/August 1984), "The Road Less Traveled". National Parks. 58 (7/8) :34–35 Trail volunteers worked with the National Park Service to map a permanent route for the trail, and by 1971 a permanent route had been marked, though minor changes continue to this day. By the close of the 20th century, the Park Service had completed the purchase of all but a few miles of the trail's span.
Extensions The International Appalachian Trail is a extension running northeast from Maine into New Brunswick and Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, where it ends at Forillon National Park. It is a separate trail and not an official extension of the Appalachian Trail. Other branches are designated in parts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and along the western shore of Newfoundland, to the northern end of the Appalachian Mountain range, where it enters the Atlantic Ocean, near L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site. The route has since been extended to Greenland, Europe, and Morocco.International Appalachian Trail news , October 7, 2015
Although the Appalachian Trail ends in Georgia, the Appalachian Mountains continue south to Flagg Mountain in Alabama. In 2008, the Pinhoti National Recreation Trail in Alabama and Georgia, which terminates at Flagg Mountain, was connected to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail via the Benton MacKaye Trail. Promoters of the Southern extension refer to MacKaye's statement at the 1925 conference that the Georgia to New Hampshire trail should, in the future, extend to Katahdin, and "then to Birmingham, Alabama". , The Pinhoti Trail terminates at the base of Flagg Mountain, near Weogufka in Coosa County, east of Birmingham. In 2010, the Alabama state legislature formed the Alabama Appalachian Mountain Trail Commission to provide state resources for trail improvements, although officially designating Pinhoti as part of the Appalachian Trail would require an act of the United States Congress.
The Appalachian Approach Trail in Georgia begins at Amicalola Falls State Park's visitor center and ends at Springer Mountain. Because Springer Mountain is in a remote area, the Approach Trail is often the beginning of North bound thru-hike attempts. Much of the Approach Trail was originally built as part of the Appalachian Trail, before the southern terminus was relocated from Mount Oglethorpe to Springer Mountain in 1958.
Flora and fauna The Appalachian Trail is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, including 2,000 rare, threatened, endangered, and sensitive plant and animal species.
Animals The American black bear (Ursus americanus), among the largest animals along the Appalachian Trail, rarely confronts people. The black bear is the largest omnivore that may be encountered on the trail, and it inhabits all regions of the Appalachians.Wingfoot "Black Bears on the Appalachian Trail" TrailPlace.com (accessed September 14, 2006) Bear sightings on the trail are uncommon, except in certain sections, especially Shenandoah National Park and portions of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts sections, where bear populations have increased steadily since 1980; confrontations are rarer still.
Other hazards include venomous snakes, including the Eastern timber rattlesnake and copperhead, which are common along the trail. Both snakes are generally found in drier, rockier sections of the trail. The copperhead's range extends north to around the New Jersey–New York state line, while rattlesnakes are commonly found along the trail in Connecticut and have been reported, although rarely, as far north as New Hampshire. Other large mammals commonly sighted include deer; elk, reintroduced in the Smoky Mountains; and moose, which may be found in the vicinity of Massachusetts and northward.