On the Trail: a History of American Hiking Silas Chamberlin Lehigh University
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Lehigh University Lehigh Preserve Theses and Dissertations 2014 On the Trail: A History of American Hiking Silas Chamberlin Lehigh University Follow this and additional works at: http://preserve.lehigh.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Chamberlin, Silas, "On the Trail: A History of American Hiking" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1451. This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact [email protected]. On the Trail: A History of American Hiking by Silas Chamberlin A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Doctor of Arts) in American History Lehigh University May 2014 © 2014 Copyright Silas Chamberlin ii Approved and recommended for acceptance as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Silas Chamberlin On the Trail: A History of American Hiking Defense Date Stephen Cutcliffe, Ph.D. Dissertation Director Approved Date Committee Members: Stephen Cutcliffe, Ph.D. Roger Simon, Ph.D. John Pettegrew, Ph.D. Adam Rome, Ph.D. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I cannot imagine writing this dissertation without the guidance and encouragement of my advisor and committee chair, Steve Cutcliffe. He turned a process that is known for being daunting into something that was actually a pleasure, and, despite my relief at completing this project, I will miss meeting regularly to discuss our thoughts on hiking, backpacking, and the environment. I also want to thank my other committee members, Roger Simon and John Pettegrew, for their profound influence on me as teachers, scholars, and mentors, and Adam Rome, for agreeing to provide a fresh perspective to my work. Above all, I would like to thank my family for their love, support, and encouragement throughout the process of researching and writing this dissertation. My wife, Amanda, and my parents, Bob and Sue, have never questioned why I would spend a decade pursuing a graduate degree and writing about walking in the woods. My sister, Emily, has been my unofficial editor throughout graduate school, and she is the only “civilian” to have read the entire dissertation. My daughter, Lily, was born in the midst of this project, and, as a result, I wrote many of the following pages in the middle of the night, between putting her to sleep and getting ready for work each morning. Without her, maybe this all would have been easier. But, without her, would any of this even matter? Throughout my time at Lehigh University, I received generous support from the Department of History and the College of Arts & Sciences. A summer research fellowship made possible by the Stuart and Jean Kritzer Family Foundation allowed me iv to travel to archives throughout the country, while several dissertation and research fellowships provided the time needed to organize my thoughts and write. The department’s support also allowed me to share my research at annual meetings of the American Historical Association, American Society for Environmental History, Urban History Association, Society for the History of Technology, Association for Environmental Studies & Sciences, Pennsylvania Historical Association, and other regional conferences. I wish to thank those audiences for their feedback. Finally, I am indebted to numerous librarians and individuals throughout the country who provided access to public and private archives, recommended sources, or simply provided words of encouragement. This would not have been possible without them. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables vii List of Figures viii Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Chapter One: From Walking Cities to Hiking Clubs: The Origins 15 of American Nature Walking Chapter Two: The “Invention” of Hiking Together 57 Chapter Three: The Proliferation of American Hiking Culture 111 Chapter Four: The Hiker as Producer 185 Chapter Five: Hiking Alone in a Crowd: The Rise of the 249 Consumer Hiker Conclusion: Hiking Before and After 1968 305 Bibliography 324 Vita 344 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Title Page 1. Dartmouth Outing Club membership, 1910-1930. 170 2. Appalachian Mountain Club membership, 1955-1975. 267 3. Sierra Club Membership, 1950-1975. 277 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Title Page 1. A typical trail crew pack, 2006. 3 2. Painters along the Ausable River in the 1880s. 21 3. Plan of Mount Auburn, 1831. 29 4. Lehigh Canal, early twentieth century. 34 5. “Keep Off the Grass,” 1869. 39 6. The Helderberg Enscarpment, 1869. 48 7. Division of Levels, 1879. 49 8. Profile House bill of fare, 1859. 65 9. A failed ascent of Mount Carrigain, 1873. 68 10. Gould’s equipment list, 1877. 75 11. Mount Washington trek, 1905. 77 12. A Sierra Club Outing, 1928. 97 13. Founding the Mazamas on Mount Hood, 1894. 102 14. Theodore Roosevelt and Join Muir, 1906. 115 15. YMCA Camera Club, 1900. 122 16. The human impact of lumbering, 1888. 127 17. Philadelphia hikers on Pulpit Rock, 1940s. 134 18. Steven Mather and the Prairie Club, c.1916. 138 19. GO Club News, 1939. 142 20. Myron Avery and PATC members, c.1936. 154 21. The first meeting of the Dartmouth Outing Club, 1909. 159 22. The Hoofers’ ski jump at Muir Knoll, c.1920. 177 23. The University of Colorado Hiking Club, 1920s. 177 24. Long Trail sign, 1923. 192 25. Will Monroe on the Skyline Trail, 1925. 197 26. Trail clearing south of Burnt Rock Mountain, 1916. 203 27. New England Trunk Trails, 1919. 206 28. White Mountain Through Trails, 1919. 207 29. A PATC trail crew, 1930s. 213 30. YMCA Relay Team, 1937. 220 31. Earl Shaffer, 1948. 229 32. Graded CCC Trail, c.1936. 237 33. Hikers on the Horse Shoe Trail, 1940s. 246 34. The Man Who Walked through Time advertisement, 1968. 251 35. Kelty backpack, c.1965. 264 36. Mission 66 brochure, 1960s. 266 37. Grandma Gatewood, 1955. 269 38. “Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel?” 1967. 274 39. First issue of Backapcker, 1973. 286 viii 40. Breaking ground for the Schuylkill River Trail, 1979. 295 41. National Trails System Act signing ceremony, 1968. 299 42. Map of The Circuit, 2012. 315 43. Fracking in Loyalsock State Forest, 2010. 320 ix ABSTRACT On the Trail: A History of American Hiking is a national history outlining a novel interpretation of the American hiking community as it evolved from the pursuit of nineteenth-century urban elites to a mass phenomenon by the 1970s. In contrast to historians’ abiding assumption that environmental institutions flourished during the 1960s and 1970s, this work offers an account of the disintegration of a remarkably rich culture promoted by organized hiking clubs during the previous one hundred years. Between the end of World War II and the late 1960s, the size of the American hiking community grew exponentially, as millions of people went to the nation’s trails for the first time. In a crucial departure from previous trends, most of these new hikers eschewed membership in an organized hiking club and instead hiked alone or in small, informal groups. Drawing from scholarship in American cultural history and environmental politics, this work argues that the typical American hiker evolved from a net producer—of information, maps, well-maintained trails, advocacy, outings and club culture—to a net consumer—of equipment, national magazines, and federally-subsidized trails. As Americans came to see trail access as a basic right—something for which they paid taxes and felt that government should provide—the volunteer ethic that had defined the hiking community for more than one hundred years was diminished. 1 Introduction In early May 2003, my parents called me at college to say I had received a strange, hand-written letter in the mail. “The woods are calling. Can you hear?” the letter began. “It’s the sound of sweat dripping furiously to the forest floor. It’s the sound of muscles begging for relief. It is the sound of satisfied workers, in love with their home.” On the back of the letter were black and white photos of men in bib overalls wrestling, a man in a skirt and hard hat drunkenly dancing, and several pictures of hikers on the trail, carrying massive backpacks strapped with milk crates, cardboard boxes, Coleman stoves, shovels, rock bars, and pick-mattocks. This was my invitation to join the Adirondack Mountain Club’s (ADK) professional trail crew. Six months earlier, I had visited the club’s website and, on a whim, decided to apply for a spot on the trail crew. I convinced my best friend to do the same. Along with fourteen other college-aged men and women, we spent the summer of 2003 in the backwoods of the Adirondacks and Catskills—five days at a time—cutting new trails and maintaining old ones. We learned how to make “staircases” out of sofa-sized rocks, erect rough-hewn ladders from carefully felled trees, and design simple but well-engineered footpaths that appeared to blend into the wilderness setting. We spent our downtime roaming the streets of nearby Lake Placid or hanging out at the trails cabin, near the ADK’s Wilderness Loj at Heart Lake. The bawdy nature of the group is still difficult for me to describe, but a 2006 Backpacker article on the trail crew comes close to capturing the atmosphere of a typical trail cabin morning: 2 I followed [Trails Coordinator] Lampman into the living room, where gangsta rap played at a hard volume. In the middle of the floor, a guy with a Mohawk haircut was belly-bucking another guy who had shaved the letters ‘TFC’ (‘Trail Fixing Crew’) out of the black mane on his chest.