“The value of the free publicity that the Long Trail brings to Vermont, cannot be told. Leading magazines and great city newspapers have told of the glories of sun rises and sun sets seen from these mountain tops.”          -News and Citizen, July 21, 1922

At the height of a new focus on nature, the outdoors,  camping, hiking, and physical health in Progressive Era America, James P. Taylor (1872-1949), an associate principal of the Vermont Academy at the time, had a vision of creating a trail along the Green Mountains in Vermont to, as one newspaper put it, “awaken the people of Vermont to the neglected beauties of their mountains.” He created the Green Mountain Club in 1910  with the specific intent of designing a trail that would eventually stretch across the state and “make the Vermont mountains play a larger part in the life of the people.”  Chronicling America’s historic newspaper pages illustrate the progress of the construction of the oldest long-distance trail in the United States from its very inception through 1922. Continue reading “Would you mountaineer this summer?” Vermont’s Long Trail →