|
2,160 miles (give or take) through the
heart of the Appalachian Mountains which touches or crosses 14
states, the dream of a band of dedicated hikers.
The visionary, Benton MacKaye,
proposed the idea to his hiking friend and editor of a leading
architectural journal, Charles Harris Whitaker. Whitaker's Journal of
the American Institute of Architects published MacKaye's proposal in
October, 1921. In 1930, Myron Avery, a Washington attorney and
avid hiker, took over the project development. MacKaye and Avery had a
serious falling out in 1935 over a philosophical dispute about the
development of the trail through the Shenandoah National Park. The
visionary, MacKaye, is credited with founding the trail even though it was
Avery who labored, planned, and walked the two thousand mile path while
supervising volunteer crews. On August 14, 1937, the Appalachian Trail
was formally completed. Its northern terminus is Katahdin in Baxter State
Park, Maine, and its southern terminus is Springer Mountain, Georgia, 90
miles north of Atlanta. (Katahdin is often referred to as Mt. Katahdin.
The literal translation of the Indian word, Katahdin, means Mightiest
Mountain.) The Appalachians have remained a land of contrasts. The
mountains have been home to presidents, renegades, scientists, authors,
poets, whiskey makers, artists and, as of 1948, thru-hikers.
In 1948, Earl Shaffer became the
first person to hike the Appalachian Trail from end-to-end. Shaffer, a
former WWII soldier, had just returned from serving his country when he
set foot on the trail. In 1998, at the age of seventy-nine, Earl
successfully thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail which marked the fifty-year
anniversary of his historical inaugural hike. Each year two-to-three
thousand hikers aspire to complete the distance with only ten percent
fulfilling their dreams.
To learn more about the history of the AT,
click here:
http://www.appalachiantrail.org |
