Publisher's Synopsis
"The Appalachian Trail began as a vision in 1921, buttressed by maps. To put it on the ground (by 1937) required committed, sometimes hard-driving volunteers and a growing corps of small clubs of such volunteers through the East from Maine to Georgia. This book traces those efforts--how and where to place the footpath, the often eccentric characters who guided the process, and the obstacles--and then documents the decades following to protect that creation as the first completed national scenic trail, a unit of the national park system visited by upward of three million people every year, an icon in its own right. Illustrating this nearly century-old story are dozens of archival photographs, maps, and other documents never before published"--.
