A Hiker's History of the Appalachian Trail

Mills Kelly

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781467173070
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Every history of the Appalachian Trail tells the story from the top down, focusing on who proposed the trail, who built it, who maintain it, and on a few of the most famous hikers. A Hiker's History of Appalachian Trail tells the trail's history from the ground up, or more accurately, from the boots up. Several million hikers each year set foot on the trail for a few hours, a few days, or perhaps a few weeks. The trail was created for them, yet their role in its history is largely ignored. Working with trail shelter logbooks, hiker accounts submitted to trail clubs, newspaper and magazine stories about the experiences of casual hikers, Mills Kelly reveals what it was like to hike the trail from the late 1920s until the 2020s. What did those hikers eat? What kind of gear did they carry? Why did they go hiking in the first place? What was their relationship to the natural world they found along the trail? What was it like to hike as a woman, as a person of color, as someone with a disability? And how did all those things change over the 100 years of the trail's history?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• A Short History of Hiking
• Creating the Appalachian Trail
• The First Decades
• What They Carried
• Trail Shelters: Foundations of an Ephemeral Community
• Time to Eat
• Danger!
• Finding Their Way
• Trail Towns, Hotels, Hostels and Trail Magic
• 2,000-Milers
• Trail Clubs
• Hiking While Other
• Forest Bathing
• Conclusion
• Further Reading
• Index
• About the Author