“A Retreat from Profit”: Colonization, the Appalachian Trail, and the Social Roots of Benton MacKaye's Wilderness Advocacy

Abstract

In January 1935, Benton MacKaye helped to found the Wilderness Society, the first national organization dedicated to the preservation of wilderness and a group whose leadership was key to the passage of the Wilderness Act three decades later. MacKaye joined co-founders Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall as one of this country's first and most important advocates for a system of wilderness areas. MacKaye's attachment to wilderness began in the early 192oS, with his visionary proposal for an Appalachian Trail from Mt. Washington in New Hampshire to Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina. Like the wilderness idea, the Appalachian Trail remains one of our most important models for preserving natural areas and providing outdoor recreation. It has been mimicked to good effect in trails traversing the length of the Rockies and the Sierras, and in greenway and rail-to-trail efforts throughout the country. His AT proposal and his founding role with the Wilderness Society indicate that Benton MacKaye has had as great an influence as anyone on preserved open space in the United States.' Although MacKaye's AT proposal, first offered in 1921, was the beginning of an intellectual process that led him to the wilderness idea and a long career as a wilderness advocate, it was also a transitional expression reflective of a very different line of thought. During his early conservation career, MacKaye seldom spoke of wilderness preservation. Instead, he focused on the connections between labor and natural resources, charting a more radical course for progressive conservation policy. This essay examines MacKaye's early thought and shows how these intellectual threads were woven into his AT proposal. Moreover, it uses MacKaye's early career to suggest that the history of wilderness advocacy in the United States has been more complex than recent scholarship suggests. Recently, the wilderness idea has come under heavy criticism. By utilizing ecologicalscience, one group of critics has suggested that the complexity and stochasticity of natural processes invariably complicate attempts to preserve wilderness. The new