Transformation of the Appalachian Trail

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Social reformers originally proposed Appalachian Trail as core of new communitarian domain. Modern professionals and public-land managers removed reformist goals and made project recreational facility. The trail became medium of adjustment to urbanism rather than an alternative to it. THE Appalachian Trail is perhaps best-known cultural element in Appalachian highlands of eastern United States. The trail, stretching along spine of Appalachian Mountains through fourteen states, is now fifty years old. Millions of persons use it annually for outings that range from casual strolls to expeditionlike hikes along its entire length. When it was initially proposed in 1921, trail was envisioned as first step toward new socioeconomic domain where traditional American lifeways would be rationally reconstructed in modern context, where communitarian principles would order social relationships, and where need rather than profit would motivate economic activity. The trail and much of mountainous countryside through which it passed became instead place to which persons retreated for brief respites from everyday lives, place where they could briefly express their individualism and could have recreational contact with nature. This transformation of trail reveals much about development of modern role of nature in American landscape as response to emergence of industrial, consumer society during early twentieth century. Benton MacKaye, born in Connecticut and educated at Harvard University, proposed trail. After leaving Harvard in 1905, he joined fledgling United States Forest Service. During his years as federal forester, he came to interpret American landscape as product of two conflicting cultures: metropolitan and indigenous. The first was worldwide standardized civilization [that had] formed around modern industry and commerce.' It was marked by inhumane cities with brutalizing slums in their cores and cancerous tissue of suburban growth on their margins.2 According to MacKaye, metropolitanism caused many nonurban problems, including improvident use of natural resources and deterioration of stable, traditional society. Indigenous culture was rural and very place specific. In reality, it was a quiltwork of varied cultures, each with its own environment and regional setting. To MacKaye, this culture was the pervasive source of man's true living.3 Having reached its apex shortly before Civil War, indigenous ' Benton MacKaye, The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), 45. 2 Benton MacKaye, From Geography to Geotechnics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968), 150. 3 MacKaye, footnote 1 above, 51. * DR. FORESTA is an assistant professor of geography at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.178 on Fri, 05 Aug 2016 05:29:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms