The first history of the American hiking community and its contributions to the nation's vast network of trails In the mid-nineteenth century urban walking clubs emerged in the United States. A little more than a century later, tens of millions of Americans were hiking on trails blazed in every region of the country. This groundbreaking book is the first full account of the unique history of the American hiking community and its rich, nationwide culture. Delving into unexplored archives, including those of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Sierra Club, Green Mountain Club, and many others, Silas Chamberlin recounts the activities of hikers who over many decades formed clubs, built trails, and advocated for environmental protection. He also discusses the shifting attitudes of the late 1960s and early 1970s when ideas about traditional volunteerism shifted and new hikers came to see trail blazing and maintenance as government responsibilities. Chamberlin explores the implications for hiking groups, future club leaders, and the millions of others who find happiness, inspiration, and better health on America's trails.

In Hiking through History New York, you can hike through the forest planted on orders from President Franklin Roosevelt and follow the swath cut by the 20th century’s strongest and most influential First Lady. Or you can traverse the Minisink Battleground, a shady natural area once erupted in battle between British, Iroquois, and American troops. Or explore Fort Niagara and walk along lookout points that French soldiers occupied as far back as the 1600s. Hiking through History New York profiles forty hikes, going beyond stating miles and directions for each hike to include rich descriptions of the history underfoot. Whether you’re a curious tourist or a local history buff, this is a comprehensive guidebook to the area’s natural and human history.

Walking Washington’s History: Ten Cities, a follow-up to Judy Bentley’s bestselling Hiking Washington’s History, showcases the state’s engaging urban history through guided walks in ten major cities. Using narrated walks, maps, and historic photographs, Bentley reveals each city’s aspirations. She begins in Vancouver, established as a fur trade emporium on a plain above the Columbia River, and ends with Bellevue, a bedroom community turned edge city. In between, readers crisscross the state, with walks through urban Olympia, Walla Walla, Tacoma, Seattle, Everett, Bellingham, Yakima, and Spokane. Whether readers pass through these cities as tourists or set out to explore their home terrain, they will discover both the visible and invisible markers of Washington history underfoot.

What could be better than a walk through Colorado's mountains, woods, or valleys? How about a history hike? Hikers and historians Ben Fogelberg and Steve Grinstead take you there, and then take you beyond-sharing vignettes of days past to enhance these 50 walks to historic places in and around Rocky Mountain National Park, Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, La Junta, and Trinidad. View gold and silver mines in their lofty mountain perches, visit old homesteads, walk to the site of a coal-mining tragedy, explore the burn zone of the Hayman Fire, descend a canyon to discover rock art and dinosaur tracks, even climb to remnants of a crashed B-17 bomber! From mile-long strolls to crossing the flanks of fourteeners, Walking Into Colorado's Past has fun and fascinating history hikes for all ages.

Hiking through History: Civil Wars Sites on the Appalachian Trail

Israel has one of the most extensive and highly developed hiking trail systems of any country in the world. Millions of hikers use the trails every year during holiday breaks, on mandatory school trips, and for recreational hikes. Walking the Land offers the first scholarly exploration of this unique trail system. Featuring more than ten thousand kilometers of trails, marked with hundreds of thousands of colored blazes, the trail system crisscrosses Israeli-controlled territory, from the country's farthest borders to its densest metropolitan areas. The thousand-kilometer Israel National Trail crosses the country from north to south. Hiking, trails, and the ubiquitous three-striped trail blazes appear everywhere in Israeli popular culture; they are the subjects of news articles, radio programs, television shows, best-selling novels, government debates, and even national security speeches. Yet the trail system is almost completely unknown to the millions of foreign tourists who visit every year and has been largely unstudied by scholars of Israel. Walking the Land explores the many ways that Israel's hiking trails are significant to its history, national identity, and conservation efforts.

Ramble On: A History of Hiking How did hiking evolve from the upper-class European sport of alpinism and the publication of an English travel guide into an activity that now has millions of participants all over the world? Who built the thousands of miles of trails that now crisscross America? What did early hikers wear, and what were some of the key innovations that led to our modern array of hiking gear and apparel? And what were some of the reasons why people hiked, and how have those changed over time? Ramble On attempts to answers these and many other questions. This book chronicles hiking's roots in alpinism and mountaineering, the societal trends that fostered its growth, some of the early hikers from the nineteenth century, the first trails built specifically for hiking, the formation of the first hiking clubs, as well as the evolution of hiking gear and apparel. The book includes anecdotal stories of trail development in some of our oldest and most iconic national parks, such as Glacier, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Great Smoky Mountains, Mt. Rainier and Acadia, as well as the first trails that were blazed in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, America's first hiking destination. It also takes a look at some of the peculiar and quirky traditions of some of the early hiking clubs. One of the most compelling stories was the apparel women were forced to wear during the Victorian Era, and the danger those fashion standards posed to women who dared to venture into the mountains. Ramble On also takes a look at some of the issues that currently impact hikers and trails, such as overcrowding and social media, and takes a peek into the future on how some of these trends could unfold.