University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2016 Walking in American History: How Long Distance Foot Travel Shaped Views of Nature and Society in Early Modern America Brian Christopher Hurley University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Environmental Studies Commons, Other American Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hurley, Brian Christopher, "Walking in American History: How Long Distance Foot Travel Shaped Views of Nature and Society in Early Modern America" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1530. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1530 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Walking in American History: How Long Distance Foot Travel Shaped Views of Nature and Society in Early Modern America A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Brian C. Hurley Colby College Bachelor of Arts in History and Religious Studies, 2003 May 2016 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ____________________________________________________ Dr. Elliott West Dissertation Director _____________________________________________________ Dr. Michael Pierce Committee Member _________________________________________ Dr. Patrick Williams Committee Member Abstract The industrialization of transportation, first with railroads, and then with automobiles, took Americans away from foot transport, changing how Americans interacted with one another and viewed their surroundings. The dissertation traces the walking trips of five central figures in this era of mechanized transport, the personal impact of their experiences while walking through a land they were accustomed to skimming across, and the ways in which these personal revelations led to changes in the national consciousness. Walking upright was central to the development of homo sapiens as a species, and shaped the way they interacted with their environment. Certain aspects of that earliest walking – creativity, connection, independence – have carried through walking throughout history. Walking was integrated into everyday life to the modern industrial age. At that point, while there was continuity with the past, long distance walking took on new meaning with different situation. By examining the walking of John Muir, Charles Fletcher Lummis, Edward Payson Weston, Vachel Lindsay, and Benton MacKaye, both the changes and continuity come to light. Walking was a way for Americans at the turn of the century to stay connected with their past while undergoing rapid modernization. It was a way to preserve individual while fostering community. It allowed them to connect with the natural world while increasingly being separated from it. It let them focus on the physical in the face of the mechanical. These notions have continued to shape the modern American culture and landscape to the present. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION The United States at Three Miles an Hour 1 CHAPTER ONE John Muir’s Progress: Muir’s Walk to the Gulf as Pilgrimage 32 CHAPTER TWO Following Footsteps: Charles Fletcher Lummis and His Walk West 65 CHAPTER THREE Walking Machines: Edward Payson Weston and the Industrialization of Walking 98 CHAPTER FOUR Poet Errant: Vachel Lindsay, Walking, and Antimodernism 131 CHAPTER FIVE The Preservation of the World: Walking, Wildness, and Wilderness on the Appalachian Trail 170 CONCLUSION A Small Step for Man: Walking Since World War II 207 EPILOGUE Leave Only Footprints 232 BIBLIOGRAPHY 238 Introduction: The United States at Three Miles an Hour After college, I set out on a walk from my campus in central Maine to some undetermined point south and west. I ultimately stopped in Illinois, a trip of roughly 1,700 miles. About 400 miles into my walk, I found myself lost in the South Bronx, looking for a bridge to take me to Manhattan. I knew I needed to go roughly in the direction of Yankee Stadium, so I stopped in a liquor store to ask how to get there. The man at the counter began to give me directions using buses and trains. When I told him I needed walking directions, he replied, “Oh, you can’t walk to Yankee Stadium”, believing the distance to be too far, and also having no idea how to get there other than with buses and trains. I informed him that I thought I could make it as I had already walked here all the way from Maine, and Yankee stadium was no more than a mile or two away, to which he asked, “From Main and what?” When I got across that I had actually walked from the state of Maine, about 400 miles away, he seemed mildly impressed. A moment later, a woman walked out of the back room. He called her over and said, “You’re not going to believe this! This kid is going to walk to Yankee Stadium!” That interaction provided a window into how the way we move around shapes our view of our surroundings in fundamental ways. The man at the liquor store had a mental map of the South Bronx that looked, I imagine, much like a subway map.1 Distances and directions mattered less than train lines and bus routes. In his world, two locations are joined not by streets and air and grass, but by the train car that you enter. Similarly, many people I spoke to about my walk could only imagine crossing state lines on an interstate highway. Local roads were literally that: local. My walk showed me a different way of seeing my surroundings. Previous trips that 1 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge: The Joint Center for Urban Studies, 1960), 1- 14 for a description of the way the means by which we travel shape the way we view and perceive our surroundings. 1 required me to carry a sleeping bag and tent in a backpack had involved driving, flying, or taking the Greyhound to some mountains, rivers, and deserts. This trip involved travel along primitive trails through mountains, but it also involved my college campus, my great aunt’s house, and a liquor store in the South Bronx. It became clear how those places are not divided into compartments, but joined in space, and, for me, by the activity of walking. Traveling on foot, forests gradually transformed into farms and towns and suburbs and cities and then back again. Throughout American history many others have taken long distance walks like mine. The particulars of many of those experiences are lost to us, as are the lessons that the walkers took away with them. Some of those long walks, however, are documented, usually by the walkers themselves. Those experiences and how the walkers regarded them offer insights into their times, insofar as those embarking on the excursions did so in response, and often in reaction, to what they saw as changes and conditions in the nation around them. Some of these super-pedestrians, besides, went on to play prominent roles in social, cultural and political life, roles guided by values and views these persons had taken away from their long-distance tramps. Thus the experiences of long distance foot travel both reflects the evolving nation and has played a role in determining how that evolution took place. In recent years, especially as we have begun to wake up to the effects of a decades-long binge of automobile travel, historians, philosophers, medical researchers and urban planners have given increasing attention to how Americans have moved around. Some of this attention has been directed toward walking. Historical studies either speak very broadly of walking in general or focus in on a specific person or event in walking or transportation history. 2 There are several comprehensive histories of walking, the best of which is Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking2. Solnit provides a thorough account of the philosophical basis for the long walk and recreational walking in general. She traces its roots to 18th century England, when it both became safer to walk and became increasingly desirable to escape from the industrial, polluted city centers. When English style gardens no longer satisfied walkers, they escaped to the hills, where they traveled ever longer distances. This activity provided the raw material for the Romantics, who in turn inspired Americans like Thoreau, who inspired Muir, and so on. Solnit makes brief mention of some of the longer walks, and provides useful context, but her purpose is not to examine the narrower impact of the walk in American history. Kerry Segrave focuses more directly on the United States in his America on Foot: Walking and Pedestrianism in the 20th Century3. Segrave’s focus is not on how walking has shaped American history, but on how America has shaped walking. His goal is a clearer understanding of the act of walking in any form. At the extreme end of breadth of topic is Joseph Amato’s On Foot: A History of Walking4. Amato seems to define walking as anything that people do while on two feet. His history is more one of bipedalism than of walking. With so many varied topics, there is little room for analysis or specific focus. Amato provides a laundry list of walks and walk-related activities, but does not suggest any ways that the act of walking distinguishes these from others. Thor Gotaas explores related themes at a slightly faster pace in his book, Running: A Global History5. 2 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). 3 Kerry Segrave, America On Foot: Walking and Pedestrianism in the 20th Century (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co.